p^<^" J 



RIGHT 



OF THE BIBLE 



IN 



OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 



GEORGE B. CHEEVER, D.D. 



5>^'cOPYRi4SHf'''^A 
/..Mo ^ ,/' 

NEW YORK: ^■^-^— -^ 
ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, 

No. 285 BROADWAY. 



1854 







V^r<_ 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by 

ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, 

In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District" of New York. 



STEREOTYPED BY 

THOMAS B. SMITH. 
216 William St., N. Y. 



PRINTED BY 

E. O. JENKINS. 
114 Nassau St. 



1h>r^r^i-%^^^ 



refare. 



The argument in these pages was constructed 
with special reference to some labored and plausi- 
ble endeavors tQ commend to the Christian com- 
munity the banishment of the Bible and religious 
instruction from our Common Schools. These en- 
deavors are made with reference to the demands of 
a portion of the leaders of a particular sect, and 
for a temporary purpose ; it is the priests of Ro- 
manism, and not the common people, nor their chil- 
dren, who would break up our common school sys- 
tem for sectarian purposes, and shut out the light 
and influence of the Word of God. 

It ought never to be forgotten that we are laying 
the foundations of many generations. Our school- 
system, and the principles on which we ground it, 
or by which we alter it, must not be contemplated 
through the eye-glasses of a present short-sighted 



IV PBEFACE. 

sect, or political party, or temporary prejudice, but 
through the vista of a hundred generations, and a 
thousand years. To-day indeed we legislate for 
only twenty-five millions ; to-morrow for a hundred 
millions. Yet the project is up for legislating the 
Bible and religion out of our schools, and thus pro- 
viding for the training of the hundreds of millions 
of the future generations of this country. 

The question is not for ourselves, but for our 
children, and our children's children. The question 
is not local, but a question for the whole country. 
It is argued on principles of exclusion on the one 
side, that apply everywhere ; and on principles of 
religion and of right for the human race, on the 
other hand, that apply everywhere. If we, in this 
generation, get the Bible and religion effectually out 
of our schools, ignoring it, or legalizing its exclu- 
sion, and putting the ban of sectarian ignominy 
upon it, another generation will not be likely to re- 
store it to its rightful place, or to redeem them- 
selves from the fetters of this dreadful mistake. 
There are those who would establish in our school- 
system the thunder of the Vatican, with an Index 
Expurgatorius for our whole school literature ; and 
even good men are fearfully influenced by their 
sophistry. 



PREFACE. T 

" It is a question," said Mr. Webster, " which, in 
its decision, is to influence the happiness, the tem- 
poral and the eternal welfare, of one hundred mil- 
lions of human beings, alive and to be born, in this 
land. Its decision will give a hue to the apparent 
character of our institutions ; it will be a comment 
on their spirit to the whole Christian world." " I 
insist that there is no charity, and can be no char- 
ity, in that system of instruction from which Chris- 
tianity is excluded." We commend to the earn- 
est consideration of the reader, the powerful argu- 
ment of Mr. Webster, commencing on page 241 of 
this volume. 

The public mind is beginning to be awakened on 
this subject While these sheets are passing through 
the press, we are glad to notice an able article in 
the New York Observer, commenting on the recent 
extraordinary decision of the State Superintendent, 
founded on the complaint of a Eoman Catholic 
priest, in which the facts of the case have been 
shown to have been entirely misrepresented. Yet 
the Superintendent, on an ex parte view, has issued 
a judgment doing great injustice to individuals, and 
assuming, contrary to the custom and special and 
common Jaw of our school system, that neither the 
Bible may be read, nor religious instructions given. 



VI - PREFACE. 

To say that they must not be given, nor prayer be 
offered, in school hours, is to banish them entirely. 
The act is despotic, unauthorized, illegal. " Such a 
position," says the author of the argument in the 
Observer, " I hold to be not only unsustained by 
any law, but to be at war with the spirit of our 
statutes, with the policy of our State, and with the 
best interests of our country." 

From the history, nature, and laws of our Com- 
mon School System, as developed in this volume, 
the reader will be able to demonstrate the perfect 
correctness of this statement. The decision of the 
State Superintendent, and some of the views else- 
where set forth under like authority, tend, accord- 
ing to the argument of Mr. Webster, to " under- 
mine and oppose the whole Christian religion," and 
consequently the common law of the land. " In 
all cases," Mr. Webster says, "there is nothing 
that we look for with more certainty, than this gen- 
eral principle, that Christianity is part of the 

LAW OF THE LAND." 



PAGE 

Preface 3 

Introduction 9 

The Argument against the Scriptures driven to its 

Absurdities 13 

The Christian's Rights of Conscience . . 33 

The Bible not Sectarian 37 

Consequences of the Reasoning for the Exclusion of 
the Bible, on the ground of its being an Op- 
pression to use it . . . . . . 68 

The Just Principle of Settlement. Rights of the 

Majority 58 

Supreme Authority and Right of the Bible. Truth 

more rightful than Error . . . . 72 
Right of Religious Education by the State. Opin- 
ion of Mr. Webster 90 

The Bible the Common Inheritance of the World. 

Opinion of Justice Story .... 96 
Fatal Policy of the Exclusion of Religion. Opinion 
of Washington, and of the Framers of the Con- 
stitution 104 

The Essential Requisites in a Common School Edu- 
cation. Case of the Deaf and Dumb . . 110 
Argument from the Nature of an Oath . . .118 
Infidel Aspect and Tendency of the Exclusion of Re- 
ligion from a Common School Education . 1 24 
Argument from the Necessity of Religious Self-gov- 
ernment 132 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



Illustrations from Scotland. Argument by Dr. 

Candlisli. Opinion of Bunsen . . . 139 
Presentation of the subject by John Foster . .150 
Argument from the Nature of Moral Science . • 15Y 
Objection that the Romanists are excluded, An- 
swered 164 

Appropriateness and Beauty of the Word of God in 

our Common Schools 174 

Importance of the Bible and of Religious Instruction 

in the Female Schools. Its interdiction odious 182 
Necessity of a Christian Common School Education 

for a Living and Progressive Civilization . 194 

Argument from the History of Common Schools and 

the School Statutes, in New York . . 199 

Report of the Commissioners, and Foundation of the 

System by the State 205 

Beginning of th<s War against the Scriptures . 215 
Establishment of the Free School System. Renewal 

of the War against the Scriptures . . . 224 
Argument of Daniel Webster against the plan of 

education without the Bible .... 241 
Singular Example of Sectarian Legislation against 

the Christian Sabbath 257 

Common School System of Connecticut . . . 269 
Common School System of Massachusetts , . 274 
Board of National Popular Education . . .279 
Custom and Opinion of Massachusetts . . . 285 
Opinion and Practice in Pennsylvania and New 

Jersey 293 

Conclusion . 300 



Within a few years, and at the instigation of the 
sect of Eoman Catholics, a powerful effort has been 
made, and is still making, to divide and break up 
our system of free common schools. The effort is 
to be continued and urged with all the energy, 
authority, and perseverance of the papal power in 
our country. 

Connected with this effort, and fundamental to it, 
is the attempted exclusion of the Bible and the 
Christian religion from our whole system of free 
common school instruction. To advance this effort, 
arguments have been constructed against the sacred 
Scriptures as a sectarian book, and much plausible 
sophistry has been spread through the communityj 
to the effect that justice to the Roman Catholics re- 
quires that we should, for their sake, exclude the 



X INTRODUCTION. 

Bible at their will, and give to tliem the power of 
expurgating the school literature according to their 
sectarian canons, precisely after the type of that 
despotic power which is wielded in the Vatican. 
This would be to place every other sect in the com- 
munity in subordination to theirs, and to legislate 
in behalf of their conscience, and 'against the con- 
science of all Christian societies and persons, that 
reverence the word of God, and claim the right of 
its presence and influence in the system of common 
school education. 

We propose to show that such a course would 
be contrary to Divine law, and to all just and equal 
human law ; contrary to the obligations of benevo- 
lence ; contrary to the rights, and injurious to the 
welfare of the whole country ; contrary to the prin- 
ciples of civil and religious freedom ; contrary to 
long settled Christian precedent and custom, and 
to the expressed vrill, wishes, and judgment of the 
Christian community ; contrary to our best local 
statutes; contrary to the decisions of the vfisest 
statesmen, the most illustrious patriots, and the 
most learned jurists of our land ; and contrary to 
the history and fundamental principles and provis- 
ions of our free school system, as established by 
the State and supported by the people. 



INTRODUCTIGJST. xi 

We propose to show, on the other hand, that 
while it is essential to forbid sectarianism in the 
public schools, it is as essential to bring them under 
the teachings and power of true religion ; that re- 
ligion should not be driven out under cover of repel- 
ling sectarianism ; that it is as dearly the right and 
duty of the State to instruct the children in religious, 
as it is in secular truth ; keeping out sectarianism 
by keeping in the Bible, and preventing bigotry by 
making religion free, and bringing all the children 
under the same celestial light ; that the Bible in our 
schools is the birth-right of ail the children, but es- 
pecially of those who can have no other education but 
such as the State gives them ; that the government is 
bound, in justice to the overwhelming Christian ma- 
jority whom it taxes for the support of common 
schools, to place the Bible and the common truths 
of Christianity in the course of free common school 
education ; that this is a right of the Christian con- 
science which cannot justly be refused at the de- 
mand of any sect ; that it is essential to the security 
of our laws and institutions, and to the preservation 
both of civil and religious liberty ; that its exclu- 
sion would alienate the affections and support of 
the whole Christian community from the comimon 
school system ; that education in our country has 



Xli INTRODUCTIOJS^. 

been grounded in the Bible from the beginning, 
and that its banishment would be a measure of de- 
fiance to the Supreme Being, and of inevitable dan- 
ger and disaster to the republic. 



%\t Jirpnieitt apinst t|,e Stri^tos l)nij«n 
10 its JifeitrWtiis. 

The right to teach the Scriptures, and to have 
them read in the pnbhc schools, is founded on 
the fact that they are the Word of God for the 
instruction of mankind. A revelation from 
Heaven for all mankind is the property of no 
sect, and cannot be called sectarian ; conse- 
quently no sect has any right of conscience to 
object against it. If the introduction of it is 
contrary to conscience, if the reading of it is 
an act of intolerance towards those, or the con- 
science of those, who object against it, then 
the promulgation of it as an authoritative rev- 
elation, is an intrusion upon conscience, and 
by this argument God himself is represented 
as doing violence to conscience in enforcing 
his own Word upon all men, on pain of eternal 
penalties if they do not receive it. 
2 



14 ARGUMENT AGAINST THE BIBLE, 

The Deist and tlie Atheist have their rights 
of conscience ; and as they both claim consci- 
entionslj^ to deny that there is any snch thing 
as a revelation from God, and one party that 
there is a God, they m.ay claim also that the 
use of anj book in the common schools that 
teaches the being of a God, or admits the ex- 
istence of a revelation fromx him, does violence 
to their conscience. The use of Paley's 
Natural Theology, or of any reading-book 
that has a single selection from it, or any 
work that refers to the Word of God as are ve- 
lation, or any lesson that inculcates any truth 
or moral precept on the authority of God's 
Word, or on the ground of God's perfections, 
is as truly a violation of conscience, as the use 
of the Bible. 

If it be asserted that the use of the Bible is 
an infraction of religious liberty, then, on pre- 
cisely the samic grounds, only with greater 
force and directness, it may be urged that the 
use of Murray's Sequel, with its admirable 
extracts from Addison, Johnson, Beattie, 
Blair, Young, and other writers, is an infrac- 
tion of religious liberty ; for these extracts not 



REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM. 15 

only refer to tlie Bible as the Word of God, 
and tlie best of all books, but even assert and 
enforce its peculiar teachings, with references 
to it, and quotations from it ; so that the as- 
serted rule that a perfect religious liberty re- 
quires that an impartial system of public edu- 
cation should be free from any religious bias, 
is set at naught and contravened in the most 
pointed manner. In fact, Divine Providence 
has so wrought in the production of our liter- 
ature; that it would be a task almost imprac- 
ticable to construct a single good reading-book 
from writers of the best style, and in so doing 
to exclude the element of religion, or a re- 
ligious bias, as founded on the sanctions of 
Grod's Word. Morality itself cannot be taught 
without Christianity, unless you shut up the 
manufacturers of your school books to Pagan 
and Mohammedan literature. But all asser- 
tion and teachifig of the Word of God, as being 
the Word of God, all reference to it as a Di- 
vine authoritative revelation, all appeal to it, 
or to God's will, as the foundation or sanction 
of moral truth, is, by this pretended rule of 
conscience and of religious liberty, intolerant 



16 ARGUMENT AGAINST THE BIBLE, 

and wrong, an infringment of the riglits of in- 
dividual consciences. 

Suppose I am a conscientious Deist. I de- 
sire, as I pay my tax for tlie support of the 
public schools, to avail myself of the privi- 
lege for which I am taxed, for the education 
of my children. I present myself with them 
at the door of a free public school, but am met 
by a committee with a book in their hands de- 
signed to teach the art of reading, and at the 
same time to form the taste, style, and habit of 
thought in the pupil, in the best possible man- 
ner. That book contains a section on the ex- 
cellence of the Holy Scriptures. The very 
title is an offense to my conscience. But 
when, farther than this, I find the Scriptures 
referred to as beyond all question the Word of 
God, a revelation from Heaven for our guid- 
ance, with an absolute denial that the soul can 
be saved without it ; and when I find perhaps 
in some other section, an attractive and beau- 
tiful description of the evidences of Christian- 
ity, or the grounds on which it is proved con- 
clusively that the Bible is the Word of Grod ; 
I say to myself, this is an outrage on my 



EEDUCTIO AD ABSUEDUM. 17 

rights, a violation of the first principles of re- 
ligious liberty. I cannot suffer my children 
to be educated at a school where the instruc- 
tions I give them at home receive the lie, 
where they are taught that all that I have 
taught them is false. 

But the committee tell me : sir, this book is 
one of the best class books in our Public Shcool 
System, admitted to be so by all, and has been 
from time immemorial, or ever since its com- 
pilation, in constant use without the slightest 
objection. And unless you will consent to 
have your children instructed from this book, 
they cannot enter ; for it Vv^ould be fatal to all 
order and authority in the school, if the pupils 
are permitted at every freak of opinion in 
their parents, to transgress the appointed dis- 
cipline, or refuse the accustomed lessons. 

^^ Well," I answer, ^' this is an oppression of 
my conscience. I would rather have the 
"Word of God itself read, or what you call the 
Word of God, than these alluring praises of 
it, and pretended demonstrations of its divine 
origin." And I have the right of it, if the as- 
sumed premises in regard to any ^' religious 
2* 



18 ARGUMENT AGAINST THE BIBLE, 

bias," or use of the Bible in schools, being an 
infraction of religious liberty, are admitted as 
correct. I am, in such a case, deprived of 
any common benefit of Government, because 
of my religious faith. I am a poor persecuted 
Deist, oppressed in my rights and liberties, 
as a citizen, by the very Government which 
I support for the protection of both. I am 
shut out from the public schools, although 
compelled to pay for the support of them, be- 
cause the government in them is daring to 
assume the control of my children's opinions. 
You are intolerant by system, and you. com- 
pel me to keejD my children at home. 

Now, on the assumed necessity of a perfect 
indifference as to religious truth and error, as- 
suming for belief and unbelief. Theism and 
Atheism, Deism and Christianity, the same d 
priori claims, the same authority, the same 
right, or, in other words, assuming that a sys- 
tem of pubhc education, to be impartial, must 
have no religious bias, and that the Scriptures, 
as the Word of God, must be excluded, and 
absolutely ignored, the argument of the Deist 
is irresistible. 



REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM. 19 

But let us take another case. Suppose I 
am a JeAV, I say to myself — Well, in this 
happy Eepublic, and under this unrivalled 
free-school system, we are at length delivered 
from the accursed shackles of religious intoler- 
ance ; we are not compelled to endure the 
thrusting of that book of fables, the New 
Testament, in our faces at every turn, and to 
pay for having our children listen to a lie. 
Here my children can at length be educated 
without fear of any religious bias. Under this 
impression^ I take them to the nearest school 
in the Ward or section of the city I inhabit. 
But one of the very first reading books put 
into their hands is a book containing a section 
abridged from Lord Lyttleton, entitled ^^ The 
truth of Christianity proved from the conver- 
sion of the Apostle Paul." And it is a de- 
monstration that Paul was neither an impostor 
nor an enthusiast, but a sincere and learned 
person, miraculously converted from the 
Jewish faith, to the faith of Christ crucified, 
and consequently that the Christian religion is 
a Divine revelation. Furthermore, in other 
books the truth of that religion is taken for 



20 



granted, and whole courses of information and 
of reasoning are bnilt upon it, and the name 
of its founder, whom the Jews execrate as an 
impostor, is often referred to, and always with 
the most reverential and adoring regard. 
Nay, the New Testament itself, which the 
Jews teach their children to abhor, is referred 
to as divine, described in most attractive 
terms, and beautiful passages are quoted from 
it. This is an outrage on my conscience, 
a violation of the first principles of religious 
liberty. My children are excluded from 
schools, for the support of which I am taxed, 
or else they are compelled to listen to instruc- 
tions and to read lessons which would per- 
suade them that their father is a liar, and 
the religion of their fathers a deception. My 
children are excluded from these schools be- 
cause of my religious scruples, which the gov- 
ernment of the schools would thus ignore, 
contemn, or outrage. And, as a Jew, I am in 
the right, on the assumption that the use of 
the Bible, as the "Word of God, in our public 
schools, or the admission of any '^religious 
bias," is a violation of the rights of conscience. 



nEDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM. 21 

Let us take yet anotlier case. Suppose I 
am a Mohammedan. I teacli my children at 
home that there is but one God, and that 
Mohammed is his Prophet, I teach them the 
Koran as a Divine revelation, and carefully 
instruct them that all men, except the follow- 
ers of the Prophet, are infidels, and that none 
but Mohammedans can possibly be saved. 
But I pay my tax for the system of free pub- 
lic schools, and I have a right to have my 
children educated there. But the very day I 
place them there, they bring me home, as a 
specimen of the public instruction, a reading 
lesson, entitled " The spirit and laws of 
Christianity superior to those of every other 
religion." The very title is an outrage on my 
conscience, an intolerant defiance of the 
claims of the religion of my fathers, the 
proclamation of falsehood as to all the teach- 
ings I have given to my children at home. 

But I also find in other lessons and sections, 
a mode of teaching equally subversive of my 
liberty and rights. I find the founder of 
Christianity spoken of as a Divine Person, the 
Deliverer and Saviour of mankind ; and I find 



22 ARGUMENT AGAINST THE BIBLE. 

the apostolic teachers of that religion favorably 
compared with Mohammed, nay, and that 
great prophet himself, entitled the Impostor of 
Arabia. I find things taught, which, by the 
laws of the Koran, are blasphemous, and pun- 
ishable vath death. It is a violation of re- 
ligious equality and liberty for the government 
to institute such schools. My own children 
are excluded from the benefits of education by 
the very religious scruples and convictions 
which are thus ridiculed and blasphemed. 
And for this I am compelled to pay the gov- 
ernment. I am oppressed in my rights and 
liberties as a citizen, by the very government 
which I support for the protection of both. 
Nay, my very usages and precepts of domestic 
life, which I teach as sacred to mv children, 

7 o * 

are publicly ridiculed ; and under cover of the 
inoffensive title of ^' The Love of the World 
Detected," I find it asserted that Mohammed- 
ans themselves, in spite of the interdiction of 
their prophet, do everywhere, in some part or 
another of the unclean abomination, eat pork. 
I find a poem from one of the most esteemed 



REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM. 2S 

writers of the English, language given to my 
child to read, in which it is affirmed, 

That conscience free from every clog, 
Mohammedans eat up the hog. 

This man, again, is right, on the assumption 
that the recognition and nse of God's word is 
an infraction of the rights of conscience, and 
that an impartial system of public education 
must be free from any religious bias. The 
least allusion to the Saviour of the vforld as a 
Saviour, is a "religious bias." 

Yet again, we may take the case of a Chi- 
nese, a Pa,gan, a Hindoo. He is conscien- 
tiously attached to his own idolatrous worship, 
and teaches it to his children. Jupiter, Vishnu, 
Confutzee, or what not, he has the shrine of do- 
mestic superstition, and brings up his children 
in his own faith. But he desires to avail him- 
self for them, of the benefits of the free pub- 
lic schools ; for he has his rights as a citizen, 
and pays the government for protecting them. 
But the very first thing his children meet with, 
is perhaps a reading-lesson on common things, 
declaring ^^that pure religion is the worship 



24: ARGUMENT AGAINST THE BIBLE. 

paid to one Supreme Being, tlie Creator and 
Enler of tlie Universe, but that men througli 
"wickedness have become worsbippers of false 
gods, adoring images wrought by their own 
hands, forsaking the worship of their maker, 
and deifying even animals and vegetables." 
This lesson teaches the children of this idola- 
ter that his own teachings are all false, and 
that the onlj true religion is taught in the life 
and writings of Christ and h^.s Apostles. Now, 
this is an incomparably greater violation of 
the rights of conscience, than if a Eomanist 
had to send his children where the Word of 
God is recognized and read. It is, by your 
hypothesis, an oppression of him by the gov- 
ernment that taxes him for the support of the 
schools. You compel him to take away his 
children, and forego all the benefits of a free 
public education, or else have them instructed 
in what he considers falsehood. ^'His chil- 
dren are excluded from these schools, because 
of his religious scruples, which the govern- 
ment of the schools would thus ignore, con- 
temn, or outrage." It is, by your own theory, 
an intolerable oppression. 



REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM. 25 

We will now take but one more case, and it 
sliall be that of tlie Eomanist. We will take 
it as the others, not now with reference to the 
Word of God itself in the schools, but to other 
books, instructions, moral and historical les- 
sons. He pays his tax we will suppose, for 
the support of a public free school system, 
and he wishes to avail himself of the benefit. 
His priest has taught him, and he and his 
priest have taught his children, that all out of 
the church of Eome are heretics and infidels, 
doomed to everlasting perdition ; that the so- 
called Eeformation was a great and dreadful 
schism in the only true church, a piece of 
wickedness set forward mainly by one of the 
worst men that ever lived, a licentious, pro- 
fane, abandoned, and apostate monk, Martin 
Luther ; that the Pope and the papal church 
are infallible, and that the Pope's follow- 
ers, and they only, are good Christians. 
But one of the first books put into the hands 
of his children in the public schools, contains 
a speech of the Earl of Chatham, presenting 
the following passage — ^' In vain did he defend 

the liberty, and establish the religion of Brit- 
3 



26 ARGUMENT AGAINST THE BIBLE. 

ain against the tyranny of Eome, if these 
worse than Popish craelties, and inquisitorial 
practices, are endured among ns. To send 
forth the merciless Indian, thirsting for blood ! 
—against whom ? — jout Protestant brethren ! 
to lay waste their country, to desolate their 
dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, 
by the aid and instrumentality of these ungov- 
ernable savages!" Tyranny of Eome, and 
Popish cruelties ! These teachings are against 
the conscience of a Eomanist ; it is an oppress- 
ion by the Government, to compel him to 
pay for its protection of his rights and relig- 
ious liberty, and then in the public schools, 
to have his own religious scruples, and histor- 
ical learning and belief thus ignored, con- 
temned, or outraged. 

But again, he finds the character of Martin 
Luther drawn by the historian Eobertson, and 
he cannot endure that a picture so contrary to 
all that he has been taught, and that he wishes 
his children conscientiously to believe, shall 
be brought as tru.th before their minds. It is 
an infringement of his religious liberty, his 
rights of conscieilce, for his children are de- 



REDUCTIO AD ABStTRDUM. 27 

barred from a scliool where Martin Luther is 
presented as a good man. It is intolerance in 
the government. 

But again, he finds the historical narrative 
of the execution of Oranmer, Archbishop of 
Canterbury, extracted from the pages of Hume, 
and it is against his conscience to permit his 
children to be taught that Cranmer was a good 
man, or that the Eomish Court was guilty of 
barbarous persecution in putting a heretic to 
death. It is an oppression of the government 
to have this taught in the schools. His relig- 
ious scruples are in this ignored, contemned, 
and outraged. 

Once more, he finds an extract from the ex- 
quisite poetry of Oliver Goldsmith, in which 
the inhabitants of Italy are described in two 
of the lines as follows : 

Though grave, yet trifling, zealous, yet untrue, 
And e'en in penance planning sins anew. 

ThiS; again, is an intolerable oppression of his 
conscience. His children have been taught 
that penance is a rite and duty of the Church, 
and that those who practice it are good Chris- 



28 AEGUMENT AGAINST THE BIBLE, 

tians ; but here is a liint that penance may be 
merely the cover of sin ; and it is contrary to 
his religious scruples, and his rights of con- 
science, that his children should be made to 
hear any such thing. It is intolerance in the 
goyernment to offer them an education that 
exposes them to such knowledge ; it is a vio- 
lation of his religious liberty. 

Now, of all these supposed cases, which is 
the most pinching ? Who are most injured by 
an education containing such examples of '' re- 
ligious bias," such presentations of known, 
common, and admitted truth? Deists, Mo- 
hammedanS; Jews, Idolaters, or Eomanists? 
And of all these forms of conscience, which 
shall be taken as. the rule of religious hberty ? 
According to the assumption in the argument 
against the Bible in the schools, they ought 
all to be taken. But that again would create 
intestine war ; each and all would complain in 
turn of religious scruples and beliefs ignored 
and outraged by the other. Jew, Moham- 
medan, and Eomanist, would contend against 
each other more earnestly than any or all, 
against the Word of God. Therefore, the only 



EEDUCTIO AD ABSUEDUM. 29 

rule of equality and impartiality, is tlie Word 
of God for each, and all. 

But tlie assumption of the argument against 
a "religious bias" takes the sacrifice of the 
Word of God on the altar of religious liberty 
as a necessity at any rate in the free school 
system ; and now, following out these prin- 
ciples logically, consistently, in the formation 
or expurgation of our whole school literature 
for the relief of conscience, for the liberty of 
conscience, where, and at whose instigation, 
by whose conscience for the rule, for the 
guide, shall the great work of relief and 
liberty begin ? Shall the conscience of Deist, 
Mohammedan, Jew, Pagan, or Eomanist, be 
the leader and bear sway? Your argument 
compels you to the choice of some one, for 
you reject the rule of the majority, and a 
mixture of opposing consciences you cannot 
have, but if conscience be your principle of 
regulation in the school system, you must take 
the conscience of some one sect. Whose 
shall it be ? You have already determined 
the matter. Your whole argument goes for 

installing Romanism as the supreme deciding 
3* 



80 AEGUMENT AGAINST THE BIBLE, 

authority. Yoii propose tlie exclusion of tlie 
Bible, because tlie conscience of the Romanist 
requires it. You are ready to follow the 
Priest of Eomanism at his beck, through the 
whole region of school literature and usages. 
You have already begun to do this ; and the 
passages I have pointed out as incurring the 
excommunicating curse of a Romish con- 
science, your school commissioners have al- 
ready obliterated or mutilated, at the priest's 
bidding ; and you have thus made the con- 
science of one sect the tyrant of all the rest. 

And to this day this disgrace stands per- 
petuated in the school books. The Romish 
edict has marked its way, as it generally does, 
so that there is no mistaking it. And it 
stands a palpable demonstration of the conse- 
quences to which this argument against the 
Bible, at the demand of the conscience of a 
single sect, must lead. The obliteration and 
mutilation of the - school books is one legiti- 
mate result, and some of the noblest bursts of 
eloquence in the English tongue, and most 
exquisitely - wrought compositions, historic, 
poetic, and didactic, must be cut away, and 



REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM. 81 

cast ont as sectarian, against which, the sus- 
picion of sectarianism was never before 
breathed, the idea never thought of. Com- 
positions of superior acknowledged excellence 
and immemorial use are to be charged as 
sectarian, in which no quality or aspect of 
sectarianism can be detected, because the im- 
primatur of a particular sect is withheld from 
them ! Because they are not sectarian,- — ^be- 
cause the historian was not a Eomish historian, 
— ^because the poet was not a Eomish poet, 
coloring his descriptions with the colors that 
the chu.rch demands ; therefore they are to be 
marked and condemned as sectarian, and, on 
that pretence, excluded! And in the gaps 
thus made, in the speech of Lord Chatham, for 
example, the blackening impression is stamped 
upon the page thus : — 




82 ARGUMENT AGAINST THE BIBLE, 




Whole pages vf ere thus defaced at first, be- 
cause this was a cheap mode of accomplish- 
ing the Eomiish expurgation, the remainder of 
the volumes being still readable. In other 
pages, couplets of straggling stars filled up 
the omissions ; and, in another edition, the 
offensive stereotype plate, where it formed a 
whole page, was destroyed, and pages totally 
blank were left here and there through the 
volume. Such is the aspect of a portion of 
the school literature at this moment. 



Thus liave you done. But in doing this, 
you have forgotten or ignored tlie fact that 
others, besides the opposers of the Scriptures, 
have a conscience also. They are, moreover, 
the overwhelming majority, a point which we 
shall thoroughly consider. They will tell you 
that after the Word of God is thus prohibited, 
and the whole round of literature expurgated 
of every '^ religious bias," all the religious 
element, and even the Protestant historical 
element eliminated, they, in their turn, are 
conscientiously prohibited, by that very ex- 
clusion and elimination, from the benefit of 
an education by the G-overnment. They pay 
their tax ; but the Government oppresses and 
tramples on their constitutional and conscien- 
tious rights, and offers them, instead of a free 
education, an education fenced round with 
bars and lances, an education provided Avith 



84 THE CHRISTIAIS"'S RIGHTS OF CON"SCIE]SrCE. 

dykes to keep out the influx of Cliristianity, 
like tlie swamps of Holland with their em- 
bankments sustained at such an enormous ex- 
pense, to keep out the sea. It offers them, in- 
stead of an education for freemen, an educa- 
tion hoodwinked, fettered, jealous, that like a 
liveried horse, cannot travel in the public, 
highway without blinders. It offers them, in- 
stead of a system open and fearless, producing 
habits of inquiry and investigation, a coward 
education, that cannot bear the light, — ^nay, 
an education of which one of the fixed and 
guiding elements is the exclusion of the light ; 
an education that must stifle the voice and 
muffle the drum of history ; an education that 
cannot endure so much as the mention of the 
name of Martin Luther, but with priest's curses. 
But that is by no means the worst. It is 
a system of oppression ; you fall by it into 
the very evil for the avoidance of which you 
have required us, at the conscience of the 
Eomanist, to keep out the Bible. It is an op- 
pression \vhich, favoring every sect in its turn 
that is opposed to Christianity, sets itself 
against those only whose conscience binds 
them to Christianitv. You have chosen a 



THE.CHEISTIAN'S RIGHTS OF CONSCIElSrCE. 35 

public school system tliat legislates in behalf 
of every congeries of unbelievers, every squad 
of opposers of the Bible and of religion, 
under whatever shape, and at their command, 
arranges the course of instruction, puts the 
expurgatory brush in turn into the hands of 
a committee from every one of them, saying 
in succession, if logically consistent, Now 
take your conscientious turn in blotting out ; 
and resists, disregards, and really outrages 
the consciences of those only who love the 
Bible, and demand the full historical truth. 
Have they no rights of conscience? Have 
they no claim to a perfect religious free- 
dom ? Are all sects in turn to be promoted, 
and they alone contemned ? They do solemn- 
ly believe and aver that a sj^stem of education 
which, from being in the outset grounded in 
the Word of God, fearless, free, unsectarian, 
yet shining with high religious light, is delib- 
erately altered, is emasculated, is blinded and 
fettered, to meet the imperious demands of a 
sect opposed to the Word of God, and becomes 
jealous against all truth hated of that one sect, 
being thus sacrificed for a sectarian purpose, is 
unfit for the children of freemen, unbecoming 



36 THE CHEISTIAN'S EIGHTS OF COJSTSCIEKCE. 

the republic. Tliey believe that a system of 
edTication wMcli thus studiously and guarded- 
ly excludes a religious bias, and puts the Bible 
under a public ban, is in essence and inevita- 
bly infidel and deleterious in its tendency; 
and they cannot conscientiously support it. 
But you compel them to support it ; you pay 
no attention whatever to their consciences. 
Their conscience happening to be in behalf of 
the Bible, is branded as an intolerant con- 
science, interfering with the rights of a perfect 
religious liberty. The conscience of the Eo- 
manist, who hates the Bible, and must get it 
out of the schools, and not only so, but must 
have the school-books expurgated by the 
priest, or he will not send his children, you 
respect. The conscience of the Christian, the 
Protestant, who sincerely believes that the 
Bible ought to be recognized, and its teachings 
admitted, or if they be put under excommuni- 
cation, he cannot conscientiously send Ms chil- 
dren, you despise ; you pay no attention to 
his scruples ; you no more regard his deepest 
and dearest rights of conscience, than if his love 
of God, and his veneration of God's word, were 
the most offensive and licentious superstition. 



The question of the Bible in schools is not 
the question of a distinctively religious in- 
struction as sectarian ; it is a confusion of 
terms and ideas to present it as such. The 
Bible is the only un sectarian book and system. 
The Bible is religious instruction, all-pervad- 
ing, pure, perfect, but not distinctive or secta- 
rian, as opposed to this or that sect ; just as 
the atmosphere is omnipresent, translucent, vi- 
tal, but not as oxygen or nitrogen. The mo- 
ment any sect claims that the Bible is secta- 
rian, and therefore would have it excluded, 
this would be just averring or intimating that 
they are themselves opposed in it ; but no sect 
will avowedly do that. The Bible, then, is 
neither Protestant nor Eomish. It has never 

been used as such in our schools ; it was never 
4 



38 THE BIBLE :N-0T SECTAEIAN. 

at the outset introduced as sucli ; and it is a 
slander against those who love it, and a libel 
on the founders of our school system, to make 
^Tij such assertion. The Bible is used as 
God's Word, our guide to everlasting life, and 
not as a book of Protestantism. If Grod's 
Word is against Eomanism, so be it ; we can- 
not help that ; but that is no good reason why 
we should hide it from our children, or ex- 
punge it from our school literature. If God's 
Word is against Eom^anism, it is because it is 
God's truth ; and not because it is Protestant 
truth. 

The Bible is older than Eomanism, older 
than any sect in the world. The Bible is the 
only Catholicity ; the only form in which re- 
ligion can be taught without a sectarian relig- 
ious bias; and that is a great and mighty 
reason why it should be taught, or enter in 
some Avay as an acknowledged divine element 
into our public school system. It may be used 
in a thousand forms ; there are already most 
unexceptionable examples, most admirable 
compilations of Scripture lessons. It is by no 
means necessary to use the Bible as a text- 



THE BIBLE NOT SECTAEIAN. 39 

book ; but selections may be made without of- 
fence to any Christian denomination, and still 
conveying a great amount of instruction from 
the fountain of light and life. And much 
might be said as to the preciousness, the in- 
valuable worth of suLch a model of our native 
tongue, in its sweetest, simplest, purest Saxon 
idioms, to be familiar to the youthful mind ; 
a book of style, as well as thought and relig- 
ion, at that tender age, when every book, 
habitually read, forms the habit, both of 
thought and expression, into a reflex image of 
itself. The dews of elemental purity and 
power in our language, as well as of heavenly 
thought and instructions, should thus be per- 
mitted to fall daily, gently upon the opening 
blossoms of intellect. 

And here it is proper to notice and expose 
that artifice of sophistry to exclude the AYord 
of God, by representing our English transla- 
tion of the Scriptures, as a Protestant or secta- 
rian translation. It is no more a Protestant 
translation, than the Bible itself, in the origi- 
nal, is a sectarian book. Neither was it ever 
the particular version, but the Word of God 



40 THE BIBLE NOT SECTARIAN. 

itself, wticli tlie translators of our English 
Scriptures set forth as an antidote to Popery. 
Unless it be argued and admitted that the 
Word of" God in a faithful translation ceases 
to be the Word of God, there must be a trans- 
lation in some shape used. Now, as to the 
great Conscience argument, of which we shall 
farther speak, thousands and millions of those 
who pay taxes for the schools, conscientiously 
believe that our common English translation 
of the Scriptures, being neither Protestant, nor 
sectarian, but the true Word of God, ought 
to be used ; that at any rate it ought to be 
used till in the providence of God a better 
translation shall be afforded ; that it ought to 
be used, and is used, with no sectarian or Pro- 
testant design, but as a thing of equal duty, 
right, justice, and concernment to all ; that if 
the majority of our citizens employed another 
translation in their families, which they were 
willing and desirous to have used in the schools, 
then that translation ought to be used, with the 
privilege, in the case any particular schools, 
or classes, or individuals desired it, of using 
the other translation ; but in any and every 



THE BIBLE NOT SECTARIAN. 41 

case, not as a matter of tolerance, but of riglit. 
It is the just right of those, who pay for the 
school system, and conscientiously believe 
that their children ought to listen to the "Word 
of God somewhere, in some way, in the public 
schools, to have that "Word used, to enjoy that 
privilege ; and those who would forbid and 
prevent this privilege, those who would ex- 
clude the Word of God, are the intolerant 
party ; those who, because they themselves 
dislike it, would make their professed and con- 
scientious dislike the iron and intolerant rule 
of all the rest. 

But the sophistry in regard to a Protestant 
Bible is so plausible with some, that it requires 
a further notice. There is no such thing as a 
Protestant version ; there never has been : it 
is a mere figment, used to cover the attack 
against the Word of God. There is a Eomish 
version, but there is no Protestant version. 
There is an English version for all who read 
English ; the work was begun by Wickliffe, 
in the Pomish Church, before the art of print- 
ing; it was renewed and continued by Tjm- 

dale, Coverdale, Matthew, and others in the 
4* 



42 THE BIBLE NOT SECTARIAN. 

same Eomisli Cli-arcli^ before the public protest- 
ation against the errors of that church. It 
was printed, published, and circulated by the 
authority of a Romish king, King Henry the 
Eighth, with a license, procured by Cranmer 
and the Vicar-General Crumwell, of the Eomish 
Church, permitting, in Cranmer's words, that 
it might be '' read of every person, without 
dangers of any act, proclamation, or ordinance 
heretofore granted to the contrary, until such 
time that we the Bishops shall set forth a 
better translation, which 1 think will not be 
till a day after doomsday." This very trans- 
lation, which, in the main, was that of Tyn- 
dale, was substantially taken as the basis of 
the translation issued under King James ; it 
was, in effect, adopted by the forty-seven trans- 
lators employed by him, so that our present 
incomparable English translation of the Scrip- 
tures cannot be called a Protestant translation, 
but simply the English translation, and of such 
perfect freedom from anything sectarian, as 
between Eomanism and other sects, that the 
learned Dr. Alexander Geddes, an ecclesiastic 
of the Eomish Church himself, called it ^'of 



THE BIBLE NOT SECTAEIAN. 43 

all versions the most excellent, for accuracy, 
fidelity, and the strictest attention to the letter 
of the text." The learned Selden called our 
English translation ^'the best version in the 
world." 

But it is not a Protestant translation, nor a 
Protestant Bible, but it is, simply, the people's 
Bible, the Word of God in English, for those 
who speak the English tongue. If no Bible 
but the original Greek and Hebrew were the 
Word of God, then none but Greeks and 
Hebrews have the Word of God; and if all 
Bibles but Greek and Hebrew are sectarian 
Bibles, then the Eomish church itself has no- 
thing but a sectarian Bible ; her chosen version 
of the Latin Vulgate is a sectarian version, to 
say nothing of the Douay Bible. This stig- 
matizing of our English translation as the 
Protestant version is a poor trick resorted to 
in order to banish the Word of God from our 
schools. It is not a Protestant version, but it 
is simply a faithful translation of the Word 
of God in English, for the free use of men, 
women, and children of all classes and de- 
nominations. 



4A THE BIBLE NOT SECTARIAN. 

If the Eomanists clioose to use any other 
English version in the schools, they are at 
perfect hberty so to do; let them use their 
Douay version, if they please. Classes might 
be formed in any or every school with the 
Douay version, or the common English ver- 
sion, and either be iised at pleasure. But for 
one party to say to the other, — Because we do 
not desire to have the English translation used 
in the schools, you shall not have it, and for 
this to be enforced as the rule, would be glar- 
ing injustice and intolerance. 

The Word of God in English is no more 
the Protestant Bible or the Protestant version 
than the science of Algebra in Enghsh is 
Protestant Algebra, or of astronomy the Pro- 
testant astronomy ; no more than the stars in 
America are Protestant stars, or the sun a 
Protestant sun. Both the works of God and 
the AYord of God are God's truth. The works 
of God, this sun, these stars, are seen in 
England, through an English atmosphere, in 
America, through an American atmosphere, 
but they do not on that account, in America 
or England, cease to be the sun and stars of 



THE BIBLE NOT SECTAKIAN. 45 

Grod, or become a sun and stars of Bnglisli or 
American workmanship. The light is not 
American light, nor English light, because 
it pours from the sky, through clouds in the 
English or American climate, but it is God's 
light, though it poured through a London fog. 
Suppose now, (to take another line of illus- 
trations,) that a poor man comes with his 
children to a public asylum for something to 
eat. He is received and placed with his chil- 
dren at a table bountifully spread, and is told 
to eat abundantly. But suddenly he sees a 
salt-cellar on the table, and declares that he 
cannot eat salt, neither he nor his children, nor 
anything cooked with it, for that he has a scru- 
pulous religious conscientious objection against 
it. And suppose that, rather than turn the 
man away hungry, you set a separate table for 
him, and provide food that has no salt in it. 
But, meanwhile, the other inmates of the asy- 
lum come to their daily nourishment, and sit 
down and eat at the other table with the salt 
upon it ; and then this man of so great con- 
science farther declares, that neither he nor his 
children can partake of food in that house, 



46 THE BIBLE KOT SECTARIAN. 

unless they exclude salt from the house ; that 
it is an oppression of his conscience to be 
obliged to eat any thing where others are eat- 
ing salt, and that if you persist in having salt 
as one of the regular articles of food in that 
asylum, you will be guilty of starving him and 
his children to death, for that he has no means 
of getting food anywhere else, and his con- 
science prevents the possibility of his availing 
himself of the food offered to him there. 
Would you say that the government are to be 
bound by the conscience of this family, and 
that they have no right to authorize the use of 
salt at all in that asylum ? To this extent does 
the demand of the Eomanists against the 
Scriptures go. 

Now, apply this to the case before us. Sup- 
pose that a particular family object to their 
childreii studying arithmetic out of Colburn's 
Sequel. It is no matter what the ground of 
conscience in this case is ; it is sufficient that it 
is conscience that professes to make the objec- 
tion. The children come to school, and in 
obedience to their parents' command, refuse to 
get, along with the other children of the class 



THE BIBLE JSTOT SECTARIAIT. 47 

the lesson set them. They persist in their 
refusal, till at length they are forbidden the 
school, unless they will observe its discipline, 
and use that book. Now, would any man un- 
dertake to set up a cry of intolerance and 
hardship in this case ? Suppose there were a 
score of families and a hundred children united 
in the same objection. Would the sense of 
right and justice in the community demand 
that Colburn's Sequel be excluded from the 
school, or that otherwise those children were 
oppressively treated, deprived of the means of 
education ? No, you would say ; it is a wilful 
obstinacy in this case, interfering with and 
breaking up all possibility of order and disci- 
pline in the school, which must be main- 
tained. 

Suppose again, that the New Testament is 
used as a class-book in the schools, and a cer- 
tain number of children refuse to read that, 
and persist in the refusal. Is it any less wrong, 
any less a breach of order and discipline, to 
refuse to read the lesson in the New Testa- 
ment, than it would be to refuse to get the 
lesson in Colburn's Sequel ? And if the Su- 



48 THE BIBLE IS^OT SECTARIAN". 

perintendent of the scliool decides, that unless 
the children will obey the rules of the school 
they cannot be received into it, is it any more 
injustice in this case, than it would be in the 
case of Colburn's Sequel? The use of the 
New Testament as a reading book, is no more 
sectarian than the use of Colburn's Sequel, as 
a book of the science of arithmetic ; indeed, 
not so much so ; for, whereas the New Testa- 
ment is the pure truth from God, not passed 
through any human or sectarian system, Col- 
burn's Sequel is God's mathematics, passed 
through Colburn's particular mind, with his 
selected formulas, put into his system ; as Col- 
burn's arithmetic, it is sectarian arithmetic, and 
the Eomish Index Expurgatorius would haye 
denounced it as such, had he lived in Galileo's 
time, and been a heretic. But the New Testa- 
ment is God's Word, and not man's, nor men's, 
nor the property, nor right of any one sect or 
denomination. And they who, on the ground 
of an obligation to their oyhol particular church, 
should refuse to use the New Testament, and 
demand of the Legislature not to have it used 
on this account, would be guilty of the most 



THE BIBLE N^OT SECTARIAIST. 49 

monstrous intolerance toY^ards all the other 
churclies, or sects, or denominations that claim 
it, or have been in the habit of using i% and 
still insist upon that privilege as their right. 

The Constitution of the State of Maine de- 
clares that, ^' No subordination nor preference 
of any one sect or denomination to another, 
shall ever be established by law." How much 
more, that no preference of any one sect above 
all the others, shall be permitted, and that there 
shall be no one denomination to which the ar- 
rangements of all the others shall have to sub- 
mit. Now, the banishing of the New Testa- 
ment as a class-book, at the demand of a hun- 
dred Eomish children, the passage of a law 
requiring the Superintendent of Common 
Schools in any township or county to do this, 
would be, in fact, absolutely and unquestion- 
ably installing and establishing the one Eomish 
sect in preference and power over all the oth- 
ers. And yet, a public writer has quoted that 
,very provision in the Constitution of Maine, 
to prove that neither the Legislature nor the 
School Superintendent have any right to ap- 
point the reading of the New Testament as a 



50 THE BIBLE NOT SECTARIAN. 

class-book, and to require tlie ciiildren wlio at- 
tend school to attend to that lesson ! Has 
quoted that yeiy provision to prove that the 
Eomanists ought to be admitted to make a 
law for all other sects, preventing them from 
having the Bible as a class-book ! 

The argument is, that if the Bible be ad- 
mitted, the Roman Catholic children are ex- 
cluded, and inasmuch as the Constitution says 
that no subordination nor preference of any 
one sect or denomination to another shall ever 
be established by law, therefore the Bible must 
be excluded. But why? Because a partic- 
ular sect requires it ! Then what is that, but 
just preferring a particular sect to give law to 
all the others, contrary to the Constitution? 
And yet this absurd argument will seem 
plausible with many ; and any case where the 
Bible is used in school, notwithstanding the 
opposition of a party against it, and where, on 
right principles, the established custom and 
law of the school demanding it, the teacher 
and superintendent cannot do otherwise than 
retain the Bible, or trample on the rights of 
all denominations, will be paraded as a case 



THE BIBLE NOT SECTAEIAN. 51 

of intolerance and usurpation ! Because the 
Constitution requires that no one sect shall 
have preference over another, therefore it is 
unconstitutional to use the Bible ! therefore 
the Bible in the school is a usurpation and 
oppression ! Because the Constitution requires 
that all denominations shall have equal rights, 
therefore no denomination shall have a right 
to the Bible, if any denomination object to it. 
Is not that an admirable logic of equality and 
freedom ? 

The appointment of a reading lesson from 
the sacred Scriptures, with a rule that the 
whole class, or the whole school, as the case 
may be, shall take part in it, is no more an 
instance of religious compulsion, than the ap- 
pointment of a reading lesson from the Task, 
or from the Paradise Lost. If the children 
were compelled to give their assent to it, or 
signify their belief of any religious truth in it, 
then indeed it would be compulsion. But the 
appointment of a reading lesson from the Bible 
is no more an oppression upon conscience, 
than the teaching of the art of reading itself 
is an oppression upon conscience. Any school 



62 THE BIBLE NOT SECTAEIAK. 

exercise is as mucli an oppression as the read- 
ing of the Bible, if any child refuse it, and be 
compelled to join in it. Yet, to avoid even 
the appearance of compulsion, it should be 
entirely at the option of parents to say whether 
their children shall join in such an exercise. 
We shall consider this matter again under the 
example of Scotland. 



CONSEQUENCES OF THE REASONING 

|0r tilt (B^tlufun at tlit iibh, 

ON THE GEOUND OF ITS BEING AN 
OPPEESSlOJSr TO USE IT. 

The reasoning of those who would exclude 
the Bible^ makes the assumption that if only 
one conscience object to it, its use is wrong. 
No ultimate rule of conscience is proposed, 
none admitted ; and although the Divine Be- 
ing has given his Word to dissipate the doubt 
and darkness of the human conscience unen- 
lightened, and to set it right, yet this reason- 
ing assumes that a conscience without the Bi- 
ble and against it is of as much validity and 
authority, as a conscience guided by the Bible. 
A man who rejects the Word of God, has, on 
this theory, as much right to set up his con- 
science as the ground in making that rejection 

a rule for others, as one who receives the Word 
5* 



64 FALSE ASSUMPTIONS 

of God, has to propose that Word as the rule. 
And if the conscience of any person is set in 
opposition against that Word, it is, on the as- 
sumptions of this theory, a persecution of 
such persons to place that Word before them, 
or to put them, in a situation y/here they can- 
not avoid beholding its light, or even to offer 
them a vast benefit, if at the same time the 
nature of that benefit is such, that their abhor- 
rence of the Word of God causes them to re- 
linquish the boon. 

The reasoning on such premises is destruc- 
tive of the right to spread the Word of God 
anywhere. Take the Duke of Tuscany's do- 
minions as a pertinent example. The Duke's 
conscience, u.nder that of the priests who keep 
his conscience, forbids his permitting any of 
his subjects to use the Word of God in the 
vernacular tongue. Now, on the reasoning of 
those who would exclude the Scriptures from 
our free public schools, you are intolerant, if 
you give away a copy of the Bible, or teach it 
in the Duke's possessions. You go against the 
rights of conscience, and the rule and reason of 
a perfect religious liberty, if you, in opposition 



AGAINST THE WORD OF GOD. 55 

to tHe dictates of that conscience, thrust the 
Word of God before the people. And when 
the Duke seizes you, and thrusts you into 
prison, it is not he that is committing a crime 
against God's Word and your conscience, but 
it is you that have violated his freedom of 
conscience, his impartial liberty, which, in and 
for the education of his people, ought to be 
left without any " religious bias." It is not 
he that persecutes you, but you that endea- 
vored to persecute him ; and he simply gives 
you the just punishment of your intolerance 
and bigotry in thrusting upon his subjects the 
Word of God. For the Duke of Tuscany's 
dominions are merely a moderate sized public 
school, where the experiment of an education 
free from ^^ religious bias," free from the in- 
trusion of the Word of God, is going quietly 
on ; and you disturb that quiet by your intol- 
erant presentment of God's Word, against 
those conscientious scruples which the Duke 
of Tuscany 's government is bound to protect. 
And the district school is but the Duke of 
Tuscany's dominions in miniature, where you 
administer an impartial education in the same 



56 FALSE ASSUMPTIOISrS 

manner, free from any ^'religious bias," and 
witli a scrupulous exclusion of tte Word of 
God. You can exclude the Word of God 
from tlie common school or from Italy, only 
on the same ground ; a tyrannical pretence of 
regard to conscience, the pretence that you are 
bound, from regard to the conscience of those 
who oppose the Word of God, to exclude it 
from the presence and hearing of those who 
love it, desire it, and need it. 

On this theory, that is, the theory that a 
conscience outside the Word of God, and 
against it, is as authoritatiye, and as much to 
be respected as a conscience enlightened by 
it^ and acting under its guidance, if the con- 
science of the majority bind them to persecute, 
the minority ought to make no opposition, for 
such opposition would itself be an intolerant 
interference with the rights of perfect religious 
liberty. On this theory, the moment the Ko- 
manists should become the majority, and set 
the engines of inquisitorial cruelty in play in 
our own country, you have not a word to say ; 
for even if joii had the power to stop such 
persecution, it would be intolerance and bip-- 



AGAINST THE WORD OF GOD. ^ 57 

otry to do it ; it would be tlie oppression of 
your fellow-citizens, thus to prevent tliem 
from exercising and enjoying their conscien- 
tious preferences. Nay, if you even have the 
majority, you have no right so to lord it over 
the consciences of the minority as to prevent 
them from persecuting. You have no right 
to prevent them from burning every Bible in 
the land, or tearing down every Protestant 
chapel ; because, if otherwise, then, by parity 
of reasoning, if they should have the majority, 
they would have the right to force your con- 
sciences according to theirs. To this absurdity 
do such reasonings, or rather such assumptions 
and false premises, lead. 



RIGHTS OF THE MAJOMTY. 

You object to the settlement of tlie question 
as to tlie Bible by the majority, declaring that 
" wherever the question of reading the Bible 
in the Common Schools was settled affirma- 
tively by the bare force of majority, it was set- 
tled upon a wrong principle." ^' Conscience," 
you say, ^' knows no majorities," Does it 
know minorities any more? Does it mend 
the matter to have the minority rule? You 
are bound to suppose asVnuch conscience on 
the one side as the other ; if a conscience in 
the minority against the Bible, a conscience 
also in the majority demanding it. If, then, it 
is not the bare force of a majority that retains 
the Bible, it must be the bare force of a minor- 
itv that excludes it ; and which intolerance 



EIGHTS OF THE MAJORITY. 59 

and injustice is the greatest? By your rea- 
soning, you would give all the positive rights 
of the majority into the power of a negative in 
the minority, sacrificing what is dear as a mat- 
ter of conscience to twenty millions, for the 
prejudices of two millions. The question is 
not, as assumed, between a religious education 
and no education, but between an education 
in which the conscience of the minority, or 
that of the majority, shall be respected. If 
you make the conscience of the minority the 
rule, you take the monstrous position, in a 
Christian land, of legislating against the Chris- 
tian conscience, (the conscience that decides in 
favor of the Scriptures,) and in behalf of the 
anti-Christian, the conscience that decides 
against them. You. set up the conscience of 
Jews, Turks, Infidels, Deists, Atheists, Eoman- 
ists, Pagans, Idolaters, as superior, as having 
higher claims, as being, in fact, the standard of 
religious liberty, against the conscience of 
those who hold to the Word of Grod. It is not 
the professed indifference of liberty, but it is 
the favoritism of infidelity. You have, in 
your reasoning, completely ignored the fact 



60 THE JUST PHINCIPLE OF SETTLEMENT. 

that there is a conscience in favor of the Scrip- 
tures, as well as against them. 

And yet, on the ground of such conscience, 
by the tenor of your own argument, a system 
of universal education, supported by the State, 
cannot exclude the Bible and all religious in- 
struction, except with the free consent of all 
concerned. It cannot do this, and be a uni- 
versal and an impartial system. If I am a 
Christian, and pay my tax for the support of 
Government, I am entitled equally with my 
Eomish fellow- citizens to all the benefits of 
Government. To deprive me of one of these 
benefits, upon the ground of my religion, is an 
outrage upon my conscience, and upon the 
principles of religious liberty, without which 
there cannot be perfect civil liberty. But you 
do deprive me, when you refuse the Bible and 
all religious instruction, and thus compel me 
to educate my children against my conscience, 
or else exclude them from the schools because 
of my religious scruples. My scruples in fa- 
vor of the Bible are at least as sacred, and as 
worthy to be regarded, as the scruples of any 
other man against the Bible. The Govern- 



EIGHTS OF THE MAJORITY. 61 

ment cannot any more rightfullj^ deprive me 
of tlie benefit of an education, because I hap- 
pen to have a conscience in favor of the Bible, 
than it can another man, who has a conscience 
against the Bible. Admit such an equality, 
and how is it possible to decide the matter, 
but by the m^ajority ? 

If the question be determined by majority, 
there is a perfect safety; if by conscience, 
there is not, unless, indeed, you admit the 
Word of God as of ultimate and supreme au- 
thority, and determine conscience by that. If 
the conscience is to decide, the question in- 
stantly comes up, — What conscience shall it 
be, and whose? For there are tvv^o parties 
supposed, and not supposed only, in the argu- 
ment, but really existing ; the one con- 
scientiously opposed, the other conscientiously 
in favor. Moreover, the one in favor claims 
a great right and benefit, of essential import- 
ance, in the highest degree, and in the most 
vital direction. The one opposed would ex- 
clude and prevent that benefit, for any, and 
for the wliole, on the plea, not that it is in- 
jurious to any, but that it is against the 
* ' G 



62 THE JUST PEINCIPLE OF SETTLEMENT. 

sectarian conscience of a part. Which has 
the highest claim, the positive conscience or 
the negative ? Which shall have his way, the 
dog in the manger, or the horse that wants to 
eat? Shall the few that would reject the 
Bible for the whole, that the few may not 
have to encounter it, prevail, or the many that 
would give the Bible to all, because it is a 
vital benefit for all ? 

In this case, shall the conscience of the 
smaller number bind the conscience of the 
larger ? That would be most glaring, absurd, 
and iniquitous. Shall, then, the claim of the 
conscience of the larger number be admitted 
as superior to the claim of the conscience of 
the smaller ? There is no other alternative ; 
and certainly, in all reason, if, as is the 
essence of this theory, and of this argument 
against the Bible, you put both consciences on 
a par, as to right and excellence, the greater 
amount of conscience should vtqi^ against the 
smaller. If, as you propose, conscience is to 
be respected, then the greater amount of con- 
science is to be respected, rather than the 
smaller, and this, no matter on what side the 



RIGHTS OF THE MAJORITY. 63 

greater amount is to be fonnd. If it be found 
on the side of the Bible, it ought to prevail in 
the right to have the Bible ; if it be found 
against the Bible, it ought to prevail in the 
right to exclude the Bible. If it be found on 
the side of Protestantism, (if you will force a 
sectarian question into the public school sys- 
tem, as you are doing,) it ought to prevail there ; 
if on the side of Eomanism, it ought to prevail 
there. But it is those, and those only, who 
would exclude the Bible, that have intruded 
this foreign question of strife and bitterness in 
regard to Romanism and Protestantism; it 
was never broached before, never by the 
friends of the Bible, never by the founders of 
our school system, with the Bible free for all. 
^ Taking conscience, as your argument as- 
sumes, as a faculty or sense of moral judg- 
ment, without the Bible, irrespective of a 
Divine revelation, it is no worse for the ma- 
jority to determine in a matter of conscience, 
than in any other matter. In point of fact, a 
conscience uninstructed by the Word of God 
does know majorities, and is guided and deter- 
mined by them. 



64 THE JUST PEINCIPLE OF SETTLEMENT. 

Hence the necessity of that great and im- 
pressive command in the Word of God, ^' Thou 
shalt not follow a multitude to do evil." So 
long as no ultimate standard is admitted, (a 
non-admission which Ave shall show is the 
great a.nd fatal tiolotop Tiaevdog of your argu- 
ment,) if the conscience of the majority is 
agreed, it ought to determine. If the con- 
science of the majority is not agreed, it will 
not be the majority, and will not and cannot 
determine. But if the majority determine 
without any conscience at all, or with a mixed 
conscience, they have a perfect right to do so, 
a conscientious right, according to the very 
essence of representative republican society. 
If it is a matter that does not trouble their 
conscience, but their will and pleasure are set# 
upon it from considerations of expediency or 
otherwise, then their judgment may be fairly 
argued as a matter of conscience, and may be 
fairly proposed as an offset against the alleged 
conscience of the minority, which, after all, is 
but a mere blind judgment, Avithout any ulti- 
mate certainty. If you. respect the conscience 
of the minority, or of any particular sect, and 



RIGHTS OF THE MAJORITY. 65 

make that the rule for the majority, you may 
be, and are, in one and the same case, going 
contrary to the principle both of the majority 
and of conscience. In respecting conscience 
in the minority^ because it is conscience^ you 
outrage it in the majority, whose conscience is 
on the other side ; and in respecting conscience 
in the minority, because it is the minority^ you 
outrage both the civil rights of the majority 
and conscience at the same time. 

Now, as to the case of Eomish schools under 
Eomish authority, or of Jewish schools under 
Jewish authority, you say. Admit that we have 
a right by majority to teach the Bible in our 
schools, they would also have the right by 
majority to teach the Talmud in their schools. 
The example is badly chosen, because they do 
not pretend that the Talmud is divinely in- 
spired, as the "Word of God, and your propo- 
sition admits that it may be. It would better 
have been stated thus : If we have the right by 
majority to teach the New Testament in our 
schools, they would have the same right by 
majority to teach the Old Testament in theirs. 
And surely they would. But take it as you 



Q6 THE JUST PRINCIPLE OF SETTLEMENT. 

state it, and set even the Talmud or tlie Koran 
in the balance, and on your own premises as 
to conscience, they v/^ould have that right, as 
"vvell as on the principle of majority. And it 
would be the height of absurditj^ and intoler- 
ance to refuse it. You are not obliged to send 
your children to listen to the Talmud, if you 
happen to be living under a Jewish govern- 
ment ; you have the privilege of giving them 
whatever instruction jou please at home. 

But you would 7iot send your children to 
such a school, you say, — could not consci- 
entiously do it — and therefore you assume that 
it is wrong to have such a school. But this is 
just setting up your particular conscience as 
the law for theirs. And by what right could 
you pretend to do this ? They have the right 
to teach the Talmud, both by majority and by 
conscience ; and are you to play the tyrant, 
and on the plea that your conscience is out- 
raged by their schools, demand that they 
themselves shall outrage their own conscience 
for your sake, and banish the Talmud, which 
conscience requires them to use, because you 
aver that it is a pain and oppression to your 



RIGHTS OF THE MAJORITY. 67 

conscience to hear it ? This would be despot- 
ism indeed. Are yon going to deny to a 
Jewish government the right to appoint the 
Talmud in its schools for the thousands who 
believe in it, because you, as an individual, do 
not wish your children to hear it ? Yes, you 
say, because you have to pay a tax for the 
support of the schools. But on your own ar- 
gument it is better to have schools even with 
the Talmud, than no schools ; so that no in- 
justice is done you in taxing j^ou for that 
which is as much for your good as for the good 
of society, even though you profess yourself 
conscientiously debarred from availing your- 
self of the benefits for your children. 

You say you have the right to demand of the 
government a school according to your princi- 
ples, because you pay your tax ; be it so ; then 
certainly the majority of tax-payers have the 
same right to demaiid a school according to 
their principles; they have the same right 
with yourself, on the ground of paying their 
tax, to say what hind of schools they shall have. 
Are you ready, by the fact of paying your tax, 
to claim the right of legislating by your 



68 THE JUST PRINCIPLE OF SETTLEMENT. 

opinion over all tlie other tax-payers ? Have 
you tlie right, because you pay your tax, to 
tell them that they shall not have the Talmud, 
which they conscientiously demand, because 
you, a tax-payer, cannot conscientiously listen 
to it? Just so with the Koran and the Mo- 
hammedan. On your theory, you would have 
the right to turn a whole village of Moham- 
medan children out of school by means of con- 
science ; making the government for your 
sake exclude the book and the element, with- 
out which they cannot conscientiously attend 
the school and receive its benefit, in order that 
your children may, with their scrupulous con- 
sciences unviolated, avail themselves of its 
teachings. 

It is then, after all, the majority that must 
determine, conscience or no conscience; if you 
have no ultimate authority, no higher law than 
the conflicting judgment, taste, preferences, 
and universally varying conscience of man- 
kind. It is the majority that must determine, 
unless you assume, as in point of fact your 
theory does, that the conscience of the mi- 
nority ought in all cases to prevail, or else that 



RIGHTS OF THE MAJORITY. 69 

the conscience of some particular sect, and 
that the smallest and most pertinacious, must 
be thfe ruling law. 

It cannot be made to appear just, that one 
man's tenderness or scrupulosity of conscience 
should be turned into the means, or put for- 
ward as the reason, for trampling on all the 
positive rights of another's conscience. One 
man's preference, in a benefit to which he is 
entitled, is not to be sacrificed to another 
man's aversion ; much less is the privilege of 
a whole people in a right and benefit so dear 
as the freedom of the Word of God, for the 
education of their children, to be sacrificed, 
because a particular sect set forth the rule of 
their Church against it, and threaten to with- 
draw their children from the schools, if the 
Word of Grod be retained in them. Their 
children need not be obliged to use the Word 
of God, but may be made an exception ; no- 
thing is easier than this. But it is a piece of 
intolerance and oppression in the extreme, to 
require that because they dislike and reject it, 
therefore, we shall not be permitted to use it 
and enjoy its light. The thing is so mon- 



70 THE JUST PKINCIPLE OF SETTLEMENT. 

strously absurd, that it only needs to be con- 
templated as it is, stripped of all political dis- 
tortion and. apologj; to be seen, known, and 
felt in its deformity. 

We are by no means without examples of 
just and wise legislation in such a case. Our 
government has had to deal with tender con- 
sciences on more than one occasion; but it 
has not, as is demanded in the schools, set the 
example of intolerance towards all others. In 
the case of the oath, it had to determine in re- 
gard to the scruples of the Quakers, who were 
conscientiously opposed to taking it. K the 
course had been pursued which is required in 
and for the schools, at the dictation of the 
scruples of the Eomanists against the Word 
of God, the formality of the oath would have 
been expunged from existence; its practice 
would have been forbidden. But instead of 
setting up the conscience of the Quakers as 
the rule for all, they continued the rule, and 
made them the exception. ^^ There are known 
denominations of men," says Judge Story, 
^' who are conscientiously scrupulous of taking 
oaths, among which is that pure and distin- 



RIGHTS OF THE MAJORITY. 71 

guished sect of Christians, commonly called 
Friends, or Quakers, and therefore, to prevent 
any unjustifiable exclusion from ofl&ce, the 
Constitution has permitted a solemn affirmation 
to be made, instead of an oath, and as its 
equivalent." This was wise and just. But 
suppose, that because the Quakers objected to 
the oath on the score of conscience, the Con- 
stitution had, at their demand, not only blot- 
ted it out, but inserted an article or provision 
to prevent its ever being taken on any occa- 
sion, by any person. That would have been 
very similar to what is now demanded in the 
proposed exclusion of the Bible from the 
schools, because a particular denomination are 
opposed to having it taught or recognized. 



SUPEEME 

TRUTH MORE RIGHTFUL THAN ERROR. 

But we come now to the decisive point, that 
the Bible is of ultimate and universal author- 
ity over all consciences and sects, majorities 
or minorities. On this ground, and thus only, 
can we clear away the soj)histry that has been 
accumulated as a chevaux-de-frise of prejudice 
and confusion around the question of a pub- 
lic education, free from ^' religious bias." The 
Bible is of no sect, and belongs to none, and 
may not be ostracised or excommunicated by 
any, nor rightfully complained of in any pres- 
ence, nor under any circumstances, as an op- 
pression upon any conscience. The right to 
spread it, and to teach it, is from God him- 
self to all mankind, and not from man, whether 



SUPREME AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE. 73 

in the social or the savage state, in goyern- 
ments, or sects, or political parties. It is 
the exclusive property of no church, nor de- 
nomination, nor ecclesiastical, nor civil author- 
ity. 

The argument to which we have referred, 
against the use of the Bible in the free public 
schools, on the ground of conscience, con- 
founds the claims of truth and error, and as- 
sumes, as a premise, that those who receive 
the Word of God have no more right to 
spread that, than those who receive the word 
of devils have authority to spread that. But 
in regard to the Bible, as a revelation from 
heaven, for the guidance and good of all man- 
kind, the duty of making it known is para- 
mount to every other duty ; no obligation 
of conscience towards our fellow-men is clearer 
than this, nor can any supersede it. 

The case stands thus: — You either know 
this book to be the Word of God, or you do 
not ; if not, then you are engaged in a solemn 
farce in teaching it anywhere as God's Word. 
But if you do know it to be God's Word, then 
you have no right to put a book of fables on 
7 



74 SUPREME AUTHORITY AND RIGHT 

an equality with it; — ^yon have no right to 
permit the plea of another man's conscience as 
against it, to prevent yon from circulating it, 
wherever you have the proper opportunity and 
the power. If you know this book to be the 
Word of God, you cannot, without a glaring 
inconsistency, which is fatal to the claims of 
God's "Word, admit the conscience of a 
Mohammedan or a Pagan as of equal author- 
ity with the conscience of a man instructed 
out of God's Word. The conscience which 
commands the worship of idols is not to be 
treated with the same respect as the conscience 
which commands the vvorship of God. If you 
say that it is, you are instantly driven to the 
most dreadful conclusions, fatal to the very 
existence of Christian society. For the con- 
science of a worshipper of idols may and does 
command the worshipper to the commission 
of unquestioned crime, as infanticide, or the 
Molochism of the sacrifice of children even in 
the fire. But, according to the theory on 
which the exclusion of the Bible from the 
schools is defended, the theory that the con- 
science of an unbeliever in God's Word, of a 



OF THE BIBLE. 76 

man who rejects it, is as much, to be respected 
as the conscience of a man who receives it, 
and is guided by it, j^^ou have no right to re- 
sist or to punish such crime; you have no 
right even to legislate against it, for that would 
be a violation of perfect religious equality and 
liberty. The Government, being in the ma- 
jority, may see fit to oppress and persecute the 
idolater who destroys his own children, and to 
punish him as a murderer ; but on this theory 
they have no right to do it — no more right to 
legislate for Ms conscience than he has for 
their's. The Government are bound to pro- 
tect his scrupulous beliefs and conscientious 
rights as a citizen, a tax-paying citizen, who 
cannot enjoy perfect civil liberty without per- 
fect religious libertjv, nor either, without liberty 
of conscience. 

Suppose the conscience of a person who has 
married tAvo wives, and becoming a citizen of 
this nation claims the common benefits of 
governmental protection and instruction. It 
is an outrage for the Government in such a 
case to proclaim his chosen mode of domestic 
life as sinful, or to promulgate any law by 



76 SUPREME AUTHORITY AND RIGHT 

whicli he would suffer in tliat state. It would 
be an outrage in the Government, just because 
it happens to be in the majority, to punish that 
man for bigamy ; and we prove this, because, 
*^ by parity of reasoning," if the bigamists were 
in the majority, they would have the right to 
make a law in favor of bigamy. Certainly 
they would, on the principle of this theory ; 
the same conscientious right, which, when in 
the minority, it is affirmed should be respected 
and protected. If so, then, when in the ma- 
jority, it is to be respected and protected also. 
Indeed, the case of the Mormons would 
have been singularly applicable to show the 
incongruity of this reasoning. Suppose a 
handful of the followers of that superstition, 
with their priest and *^Book of the Lord," 
should settle in the city of New York. They 
claim the benefits of governmental protection 
in such wise, that their scruples of conscience 
shall not be made the instrument of their op- 
pression; they claim the privileges of the 
Common Schools, for which they assert an 
equal right with all citizens and tax-payers. 
But they find in the public school literature 



OF THE BIBLE. 77 

some scriptural or historical reading lesson 
tliat condemns their whole system of religious 
and domestic policy, and proves it to be a 
gross and wicked superstition, contrary to the 
Divine Law. How can they send their chil- 
dren where their dearest beliefs and conscien- 
tious scruples are thus ridiculed and belied ? 
They are oppressively excluded from the pub- 
lic schools ; and they have as much right to 
complain of oppression as the Eomanist has, 
when the Word of God is read in the public 
schools in the presence of his children. 

But we aflBrm that neither Mormons nor 
Eomanists would have any right to cut and 
square the public schools according to their 
church and conscience. We affirm that their 
superstitions are not to be treated with the 
same respect as the Word of God, and that 
they have not the same claim to a conscien- 
tious regard. We affirm that there is such a 
thing as ultimate and absolute truth, and that 
such truth is in the Word of God, and that no 
rights, either of majorities or minorities, either 
of law or conscience, can be pleaded against 

that, or in exclusion of it, or in ban upon it, 
7* 



78 SUPKEME AUTHOKITY AKD EIGHT 

to the prejudice of its circulation. The right 
to teach and circulate it, is the very first right 
and duty, given and enjoined with it from God 
to all mankind. No man, nor system, nor 
any body of men, nor any pretence of con- 
science, can rightfully interfere against it. 

And here we say, and Vv'e defy any man on 
grounds of just reasoning to deny it, that if 
there be any solemn charge in regard to the 
children of the commonwealth resting upon the 
republic, if there be any right vested in the 
government to meddle in the matter of educa- 
tion at all, it is the right and the duty to pro- 
vide the children with the Bible, and so to ar- 
range the course of instruction in the common 
schools, that they shall there come to the 
knowledge of the Bible. By consent of all 
who receive the Bible as the Word of God, 
this is the element of greater power and im- 
portance than any other ; and it is the para- 
mount duty of the State to secure it for the 
children. It is the one estate given to the 
children by the will of their Heavenly Father ; 
it is an estate wliich every Christian common- 
wealth is bound to convey to the children, and 



OF THE BIBLE. 79 

to apply its interest v^^liolly for their benefit, as 
guardians in trust. That command by our 
Saviour is binding no less upon the State than 
upon the Chistian members of the State, ^' Suf- 
fer the little children to come unto me, and 
forbid them not !" But you do not suffer them, 
you do in fact forbid them, if, undertaking 
their education, taking the whole care of their 
education into your hands, which, both in the- 
ory and practice, you do in the free common 
school system, you ignore and exclude the 
Bible and the religious element. You really 
defraud the children of their estate from 
Heaven. Oh, but you say, that is none of our 
concern ; they can pick up that estate, or the 
crumbs of it, anywhere; leave that to the 
catechisms. A more deliberate fraud and 
breach of trust was never committed than is 
involved in this course* 

The Bible is unsectarian and pure light. 
The sectarian schools distribute it as through a 
prism, but the common school takes it from 
the sun, admits the sun's light, hangs up the 
sun itself within the school-house. Now, you 
might as well shut out the sun-light, and light 



80 SUPREME AUTHORITY AND RIGHT 

up your scliool-liouses at noonday with gas 
because there are prisms, as exclude the Bible 
because there are various sects. In fact, we 
have no more right to exclude the Bible than 
we have to exclude the sun, for they are both 
God's provision of light for us. We have no 
more right to exclude the Bible from the 
schools, and from the use of our children in 
them, than we have to exclude the common 
air, and to pass a law that the children, while 
in the schools, shall breathe nothing but sul- 
phuretted hydrogen, or exhilarating gas. 

Indeed, this universality of the sun-light, as 
opposed to any monopolies, affords us a good 
illustration. Let us suppose the Manhattan 
Gas Company to enter a conscientious plea 
against the sun-light in our school-houses, on 
the ground that the use of the sunlight pre- 
vents the use of their gas, and consequently 
deprives them of the benefit that might accrue 
to them and their families from a monopoly 
of light. Besides, they have among them- 
selves a church canon, interdicting their own 
families from the use of any light but the 
company'^ gas. Under these circumstances, 



OF THE BIBLE. 81 

the sun-liglit becomes Protestant light, for all 
except those connected with the company, and 
nnder its authority, protest against the monop- 
oly of light ; ergo^ the sun-hght is Protestant 
light, and it is against their consciences to en- 
dure it, or to permit the u^e of it ; and though 
they wish to send their children to the public 
schools, yet they are prevented from that priv- 
ilege, if the children are compelled to read by 
sun -light ; they cannot conscientiously put their 
children under any light but that of the com- 
pany's gas. By that light, they may read and 
study arithmetic, history, and even Martin 
Luther's character, and what not, but never by 
the Protestant sun-light. Whose picture is 
this, the counterfeit presentment of what 
faith? 

And now suppose you make a compromise, 
and say to them : Vvrell, to make all fair, you 
shall have the privilege of introducing the gas- 
light for your children, but at the same time 
the sun-light shall come in also, so that all may 
be satisfied. Ah, but that will not answer ; 
the sun-light must not be let in at all, for 
wherever it is, it absolutely puts theirs out. 



82 SUPREME AUTHOEITY AND RIGHT 

'Tis of no use wiiatever, they say, to attempt 
a competition ; it is a gone case with ns, if the 
sun-light is let in at all. Our gas in compe- 
tition with the sun? Why, the children 
would read on, and read od, and not even 
know that our gas was lighted. 

Well ! so it is, in very truth, and we cannot 
help it, that the Bible really does give so clear 
and beautiful, so pure and powerful a light, 
that all other lights beside it are but winking 
tapers, and you can scarcely even see that they 
are lighted; In the language of Cowper's ex- 
quisitely beautiful hymn, 

A Glory gilds the sacred page, 

Majestic like tlie sun ; 
It give a light to every age, 

It gives, but borrows none. 

Nay, according to God's own declaration 
concerning it, you determine by it infallibly 
what is light, and whether other things pro- 
posed as light are not darkness. "In thy 
light, shall we see light." We shall see and 
know what the true light is, and not be im- 
posed upon. 



OF THE BIBLE. 83 

This common, all surrounding, vital air is 
not more my right to breathe, and yours, and 
all men's, than this air of Divine Truth, which 
is to the life and healthful movement of the 
soul, what the air is to the lungs, to the blood, 
and to the life of the body. You have no 
more right to interdict this atmosphere of Di- 
vine Truth, than you have to interdict the pure 
air of Heaven from our school houses. Nor 
is an imperfect or vicious ventilation so bad 
for the body, as the interdiction of the fresh 
air of truth is pernicious to the soul. Stifle 
out of it all religious truth, and it will die, not 
of suffocation merely, but of poison with ma- 
lignant error. Shall this be the treatment of 
the millions of youthful immortal creatures 
crowded in our common schools as in a dun- 
geon ? No, no, no ! but let all the windows, 
as in a clear summer's day in the country, be 
thrown wide open, and let the sweet breath 
from every wind of Heaven flow through, 
joyful, balmy, exhilarating. Let the gladsome 
troops of children breathe freely, and not be- 
gin their first rudiments of knowledge by try- 
ing how far they can be stifled, and still live. 



84 SUPREME AUTHORITY AND RIGHT 

This common, all-sHning sun is no more my 
right to see by, to have its cheerful beams pour 
warm and bright upon me, wherever in the 
world I am, than this Sun of God's Truth in 
his Word is my right of conscience and of 
heavenly life. This Sun of truth is as truly 
the possession of all mankind, and the gift of 
God for the race, as the sun in the heavens, 
and as necessary for the light and life of the 
soul as the sun for the light and life of the 
body. Who dare interdict the sun from shin- 
ing, or men from looking at his light ? What 
vain Canute would lift his puny sceptre to that 
orb, and say, as Lucifer from Hell, I speak to 
thee, Sun, only to tell thee how I hate thy 
beams ! And is it less a blasphemous defiance 
of God to interdict his Word, and to say to 
the creatures for whom it was given, ye shall 
not enjoy it ? This Word of God is as neces- 
sary for our perception of moral truth, as the 
sun is necessary for our perception of colors 
in nature ; it is as essential for the growth of 
true moral principle, and the right develop- 
ment of our immortal being, as the light of 
the sun is necessary for the growth of plants, 



OF THE BIBLE. 85 

fruits, and flowers. When the sun goes down 
in either case, it is night, and all the beasts of 
the earth come forth from their hiding places. 
What infinite madness to introduce into the 
constitution and custom or common law of our 
school system as one of its guiding central 
principles, the exclusion of Divine light ! If 
the country were bent on self-destruction, it 
could hardty discover a subtler and surer mode 
of suicide. Volcanoes and earthquakes are 
said to have been heralded by the drying up 
of wells ; and so, there is no convulsion or 
evil which may not be apprehended, if from 
the fountains of our com^mon ' education, the 
elements of Divine truth are drawn away ; it 
would be the most certain prophecy of evil. 

Now, if we take simply the ground of the 
great command of Grod and our conscience, 
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, on 
that ground, whatever we find to be essential 
to our own life and welfare as human beings, 
we are bound to give to others, if we have it 
in our power. If the Word of God is dear to 
us, and we know it to be essential to salvation, 
we are bound to give it to others ; if necessary 



86 SUPREME AUTHORITY AND RIGHT 

to me as an individual, I have no more riglit 
to it myself, tlian I have to communicate it to 
others ; both the right and the duty are incon- 
tro7ertible. Neither man, nor men, nor gov- 
ernments, nor hierarchies, have any more right 
to say to me. You shall not spread the Word 
of Grod, than they would have to say to me. 
You shall not give a morsel of bread to the 
wretch whom you see dying of hunger. It is 
both my right and my duty from Grod. 

But not only is it mine, but of humanity, of 
nations, of all mankind. And whatever coun- 
try, or people, set up enactments against this 
right and duty, they are, so far, outlawed of 
God and of conscience, and such enactments 
are not to be regarded in the least. Any na- 
tion, and anj'- church, that makes the use, en- 
joyment, and distribution of the Word of Grod 
a crime, is out of the pale of international law 
and of human right, and against it, and ought 
to be treated accordingly. We like the lan- 
guage of Captain Packenham, of the English 
Navy, that energetic and fearless soldier of 
Christ, who undertook to distribute Bibles and 
religious truth in Italy, ^^ It is time," says he, 



OF THE BIBLE. 87 

speaking of the case of Miss Cunningliame's 
imprisonment and release by the Duke of 
Tuscany, ^'that our rights should be acknowl- 
edged and respected. Let it be known that 
we are not to receive as a grace, that which 
justice demands as a right. It is time that 
diplomacy cease to sue in forma pauperis^ and 
that individual favoritism, however arrived at, 
give place to a well understood, authoritative 
demand, so well expressed in our royal motto, 
God and our right. It is tim^e to say to this 
manufactory of delinquencies and crimes, this 
modern inquisition, Stop ! Whatever be not 
really a crime, your pigmy, paltry, Papal 
legislation shall not make one ; and if you 
dare to punish a free-born subject of England, 
by the application of your penal proclamations 
or processes, you shall repent it quickly." 

Clearly, this is the only right and safe posi- 
tion. Christianity, based upon the Word of 
God, is the gift of God to all, and as it re- 
spects Europe, it is the profession of all 
nations. Shall any then dare, or shall they 
be permitted, to make it a crime to circulate 
the Word of God? This is the common 



88 SUPEEME AUTHORITY AKD EIGHT 

riglit of all to whom that Word comes, and 
the prohibition of it by the Eoman Catholic 
Church, in Tuscany, for example — Church 
and State being one — ^is well set forth as being 
a complete self-condemnation, a demonstration 
of not being within the pale of true Christi- 
anity. It is a glaring syllogism, fiery red 
with shame. To circulate any book which 
is contrary to the Roman Catholic religion is 
made a legal crime. But to circulate the 
Word of God is prohibited as such a crime, 
and an English lady was thrown into prison 
for doing it. Consequently, the Word of 
God is clearly proclaimed as being contrary 
to the Roman Catholic religion. This is the 
inevitable logic of the Government of the 
Duke of Tuscany. 

But with this particular conclusion of 
the Duke's logic, we need not now con- 
cern ourselves ; the point in view is the in- 
iquity of its application — the injustice of 
any law or laws against the Word of God, 
forbidding its use and circulation. Even in 
the bosom of the Romish Churchy the very 
first translators of the Scriptures into English 



OF THE BIBLE. 89 

felt this. When the youthful Tyndale began 
first to have his eyes opened to the truth, and 
to form the purpose, by God's blessing, in 
after years, to give the Word of God in Eng- 
lish to the people, he saw that it was the right 
of all mankind, for that it was the gift of God 
to all. The indignant speeches that fell from 
him, even then, exposed him to danger. In 
controversy with an ignorant Eomish eccle- 
siastic, he one day said, ^' If God spare my life, 
ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth 
the plow, to know more of the Scripture than 
you do." Bat how were the plowboys to 
know it, if it should be excluded by law from 
the system of education, on pretence of liber- 
ality of conscience ? In vain would the noble 
Tyndale's prophecy have been fulfilled, and 
his mission-task performed and sealed with 
martyrdom, for the plow-boys of his country, 
if the translation of the Scriptures was to be 
excluded from the schools, as a sectarian book, 
or forbidden^ on the plea of its going against 
the Romish conscience. 
8* 



OPINION OF MR. WEBSTES. 

'^ The Government," says Hugli Miller, 
"that should imprison with punishment or 
death the man whose only crime was, that he 
had given a morsel of bread to a dying 
beggar, or rescued some unhappj?- human 
being who was in danger of perishing in the 
pit into which he had fallen, would be held to 
have violated the rights of man, if the person 
so punished was a subject of its own, and the 
rights of nations^ if he was the subject of an- 
other State. But does not that Government 
as really violate the rights of man, and the 
lavfs of Christian nations, which says, you 
shall not give a copy of the Bible to a human 
being, however desirous he may be to know 
the will of his Maker, and however much he 



EELIGIOUS EDUCATION BY THE STATE. 91 

may feel that his eternal welfare depends on 
knowing that will? The Government that 
should act thus would so violate the first 
right of conscience and the first duties of man, 
and so uproot the foundations of society, as to 
place itself beyond the pale of civilized 
nations ; it ought to be declared an outlaw, — 
a nation at war with the eternal principles of 
duty and right, and entitled to exact no re- 
gard or obedience to its lav/s." 

Now, let us just apply these principles to 
the right and duty of providing the children 
in our common schools with the Word of 
God, and with the religious instruction they 
may receive from it, and thus judge and de- 
termine the iniquity of any statute for the ex- 
clusion of the Bible. Such a statute, whether 
in legislative act and form, or merely the force 
of prejudice and custom wrought into a com- 
mon law, Vy^ould be glaringly inconsistent with 
the duty of the State, and with our rights as 
individuals. And what an incongruity would 
it present, while the common law of the State 
is based upon Christianity, and in favor of it, 
to have the common law of the schools ex- 



92 RIGHT OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 

eluding it, and so in reality against it. The 
argument by wliicli the opponents of the 
Bible, in schools, would support their views, 
goes the whole length of denying to the State 
the right of religious instruction, because it is 
asserted to be an oppression of the conscience. 
And the demand is made of a wholesale ex- 
clusion of all religious bias, because otherwise 
the State cannot be impartial to her children. 
But let us hear the voice of some of our 
greatest and wisest statesmen on this matter. 

In speaking on the subject of taxation for 
public education, Mr. Webster once said : 
^'We seek to prevent, in some measure, the 
extension of the penal code, by inspiring a 
salutary and conservative principle of virtue 
and of knowledge in an early age. By gen- 
eral instruction, we seek as far as possible to 
purify the whole moral atmosphere ; to keep 
good sentiment uppermost, and to turn the 
strong current of feeling and opinion, as well 
as the censures of the law and the denun- 
ciations of religion, against immorality and 
crime. We hope for a security beyond the 
law, and above the law, in the prevalence of 



BY THE STATE. 93 

enlightened and well-principled moral senti- 
ment. We hope to continue and to prolong 
the time, when in the villages and farm-houses 
of New England there rasij be undisturbed 
sleep within unbarred doors." 

Mr. Webster was a man that weighed his 
words. And now in perusing the succeeding 
paragraph, let it be remembered that this 
speech was on an occasion that demanded the 
greatest solidity and accuracy in the formation 
and expression of his views, being no less im- 
portant than the revision of the Constitution 
of the State of Massachusetts. His opinions 
were, therefore, deliberate and well considered, 
and they are decisive as to the power and 
duty of the State to provide a religious edu- 
cation for her children, if an education at all. 

^* I rejoice that every man in this community 
can call all property his own, so far as he has 
occasion for it to furnish for himself and his 
children the blessings of religious instruction, 
and the elements of knowledge. This celes- 
tial and this earthly light he is entitled to by 
the fundamental laws. It is every poor man's 
undoubted birthright ; it is the great blessing 



94 EIGHT OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATIOK 

wliicli this Constitution has secured to him ; 
it is his solace in life, and it may well be his 
consolation in death^ that his country stands 
pledged by the faith which it has plighted to 
all its citizens, to protect his children from 
ignorance^ barbarism, and vice." 

These are noble words, and the speech 
bears the stamp of Webster's magnificent mind. 
The children of the State are entitled by the 
fundamental law to a celestial as well as 
earthly light, and to the blessings of religious 
instruction, as well as the elements of other 
knowledge. The assertion would seem a tru- 
ism ; and yet we are aware of the plausible 
sophistry with which a decision right the re- 
verse is maintained in some quarters, and pro- 
posed as a fundamental school law ; the deci- 
sion to exclude all celestial light as sectarian, 
and all religious instruction as an oppression 
of the conscience. 

But if the State undertake to educate the 
children at all, is it not under obligation to 
give them as good an education as they can 
get elsewhere ? If the State tax its citizens 
for the expenses of such an education, does it 



BY THE STATE. 95 

not stand pledged to teach, the children of the 
citizens all that is essential to their welfare ? 
Is it a fulfilment of that pledge to say that 
they may get religions instruction elsewhere, 
but that the State shall not provide that vital 
element, for fear of sectarianism ? May get it 
elsewhere ! And who stands responsible for 
the consequences, if they should not? 



^t '§xUt tilt €mmw\x %n\ttttmct si i\i 

mm. 

OPINION OF JUSTICE STORY. 

In dwelliiig on tlie liberty of speech, and 
the importance of securing it, that great writer 
on the Constitution of the United States, Judge 
Story, remarks : ^' It is notorious that even to 
this day, in some foreign countries, it is a 
crime to speak on any subject, religious, phi- 
losophical, or political, Avhat is contrary to the 
received opinions of the Government, or the 
institutions of the country, however laudable 
may be the design, and however virtuous may 
be the motive. Even to animadvert upon the 
conduct of public men, of rulers, or of repre- 
sentatives, in terms of the strictest truth and 
courtesy, has been and is deemed a scandal 
upon the supposed sanctity of their "stations 
and characters, subjecting the party to griev- 



THE BIBLE. 97 

ous punishment. In some countries no works 
can be printed at all, whether of science, or 
literature, or philosophy, without the previous 
approbation of the Grovernment ; and the press 
has been shackled, and compelled to speak 
only in the timid language which the cringing 
courtier, or the capricious inquisitor has been 
willing to license for publication. The Bible 
itself, the common inheritance, not merely of 
Christendom, but of the world, has been put 
exclusively under the control of Government ; 
and has not been allowed to be seen, or heard, 
or read, except in a language unknown to the 
common inhabitants of the country. To 
publish a translation in the vernacular tongue, 
has been in former times a flagrant of- 
fence."^ 

This is an impressive passage, which, like 
many others that might be pointed out, must, 
as a legitimate consequence of the exclusion 
of the Bible and all religious truth from our 
Common School system, be obliterated from 
our school literature. The Eoman Catholic 
Church can no more permit the Bible to be 

* Story on the Constitution, p. 263. 
9 



98 THE BIBLE THE COMMON INHERITANCE 

spoken of as the common inheritance of Chris- 
tendom and of the world in the volumes of the 
District School Library, than it can permit the 
Bible to be read in the common schools. 
And the theory that there must be no religious 
bias in the schools will operate with an equally- 
fatal logical destructiveness to the obliteration 
of thousands of instructive pages in the estab- 
lished common school literature. There can, 
indeed, be no such thing as freedom in that 
literature on this theory ; and restrictions 
which Judge Story points out as criminal and 
disgraceful in other countries, and destructive 
of the spirit of liberty, would be found realized 
in this. 

It is a true and noble expression, in which 
Judge Story has characterized the Bible. The 

COMMON INHERITANCE OF CHRISTENDOM AND 

OF THE WORLD. It is an expression that ac- 
cords with that of the divinely inspired Legis- 
lator, when he said : '^ The things that are re- 
vealed belong to us and to our children 
forever." 

The question may be asked, Are the chil- 
dren of Christendom alone, — ^those gathered 



OF THE WORLD. 99 

in a system of Common School education — to 
be excluded from the possession and benefit 
of this inheritance? Are the children, — 
those persons whom the State designates as 
entitled to the privileges of an education, say 
during the period between six years of age 
and twenty, — a part of Christendom, or does 
this common inheritance belong only to per- 
sons who are not minors ? Are the}^ alone to 
be regarded as capable of this freedom ? Must 
this common inheritance be shut out from the 
knowledge of all for whom the State under- 
takes to provide an education, until the period 
when that education is finished ? Or say from 
the knowledge of those, who have no other 
schools or teachings than those which the 
State furnishes, and no means of gaining any 
other education ? 

The Common Inheritance of Christen- 
dom AND OF THE WoRLD !— Then those who 
would conceal and withdraw it from the world 
— ^those who would put it under ban, restraint, 
imprisonment — those who forbid it to be read, 
are the common pirates and highway robbers 
of Christendom and the world. They might, 



100 THE BIBLE THE COMMON INHEEITANCE 

with, as mucli propriety, dispute the common 
highway of the seas. The principles em- 
braced in this just view of the universahty, 
supremacy, and freedom of the Bible for all 
mankind, are fundamental, and of the greatest 
importance in relation to the claim to govern- 
mental and international protection on the part 
of those who undertake the spreading of the 
Scriptures. Our country's authority and 
power may justly be exerted to shield to the 
uttermost those who are engaged in carrying 
the Bible to other lands. We may rightfully 
demand, from all nations, this privilege of 
freely circulating the "Word of God, and that 
reciprocity of religious liberty which we give 
to all, and which, by international law, we main- 
tain in the concerns of our commercial pohcy. 
The Common Inheritance of Christen- 
dom AND OF THE WoRLD ! — Let not, then, 
our own free country submit to the exclusion 
of it, at the instigation of a sect, from the 
public schools, those foundations of pure and 
virtuous opinion. Let us not set the example 
to Christendom and the world, of treating the 
Bible as a sectarian book, a book that must be 



OF THE WOULD. 101 

excluded because it is religious and teaches 
religion^ wliicli its adversaries assume that it 
is no function of the Government to do. But 
if the Government undertake to provide for 
the children an education in all things essential 
to their well-being as citizens, it cannot right- 
fully omit some provision of knowledge in re- 
gard to religion. This may be maintained as 
an indisputable axiom. 

'' The right of a society or Government," 
says Judge Story, " to interfere in matters of 
religion, will hardly be contested by any per- 
sons, who believe that piety, religion, and 
morality, are intimately connected with the 
well-being of the State, and indispensable to 
the administration of civil justice. The pro- 
mulgation of the great doctrines of religion, 
the being and attributes and providence of 
one Almighty God ; the responsibility to Him 
for all our actions, founded upon moral a.c- 
countability ; a future state of rewards and 
punishments ; the cultivation of all the per- 
sonal, social, and benevolent virtues; — these 
can never be a matter of indifference in any 
well-ordered community. It is, indeed, diffi- 



102 THE BIBLE THE COMMON INHEKITAJN-CE 

cult to conceive how any civilized society can 
well exist without them. And, at all events, 
it is impossible for those who believe in the 
truth of Christianity as a Divine revelation, 
to doubt that it is the especial duty of Govern- 
ment to foster and encourage it among all the 
citizens and subjects. This is a point wholly 
distinct from that of the right of private 
judgment in matters of religion and of the 
freedom of public worship, according to the 
dictates of one's conscience."* 

These sentiments are accordant with those 
of the wisest statesmen and purest patriots of 
our country, from the days of Washington to 
this hour. We could not desire a more com- 
plete and explicit description of the kind and 
degree of religious instruction which may be 
demanded and expected from the Govern- 
ment in a system of free common school edu- 
cation. The truths on the subject of religion, 
for the inculcation of v.^hich it is the duty of 
the State to provide in such a system, and for 
the provision of which, according to Mr. 
Webster, the State, in undertaking a system 

* Story on the Constitution, p. 260. 



OF THE WORLD. 103 

of education, and taxing tlie people for it, lias 
plighted its faitli to all its citizens, are such, 
that truly, in the language of Judge Story, 
'4t is difficult to conceive how any civilized 
society can exist without them." They are re- 
ligious truths, and cannot possibly be taught 
at all without a religious bias ; yet they are 
not sectarian, nor can any provision against 
sectarianism be made to touch them, nor any 
sectarian jealousy rightfully exclude them. 
Nevertheless, the assumptions in the argument 
against the Bible in schools would shut them 
out completely. 



iM |0lit2 af tilt (B%tMm 0f fdigiffn. 

OPINION OF WASHINGTON, AND OF THE FRAMERS 
OF THE CONSTITUTION. 

The endeavor to exclude religion and a 
*^ religious bias" from our character and policy 
as a government and a nation, is a dangerous 
and alarming effort. The exclusion of the 
Bible from our common school system, on the 
ground that no '* religious bias'' should be ad- 
mitted there, would be a fatal policy. This 
movement appears in strong and melancholy 
contrast with the advice of Yf ashington, and 
with the sentiments and measures of the fram- 
ers of our cou.ntry's Constitution. In his 
Farewell Address, Washington uttered the 
following warnings : '^ Of all the dispositions 
and habits which lead to political prosperity, 
Eeligion and Morality are indispensable sup- 
ports. In vain would that man claim the 



THE EXCLUSiaJN" OF religio:n'. 105 

tribute of patriotism, who should labor to sub- 
vert these great pillars of human happiness, 
these purest props of the duties of men and 
citizens. The mere politician, equally with, 
the pious man, ought to respect and cherish 
them. A volume could not trace all their 
connections with private and public felicity. 
Let it sim^ply be asked. Where is the security 
for property, ix^v reputation, for life, if the 
sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, 
which are the instruments of investigation in 
Courts of Justice ? And let us with caution 
indulge the supposition that moralitj^ can be 
maintained without religion. Vfhatever may 
be conceded to the influence of refined educa- 
tion on minds of peculiar structure, reason 
and experience both forbid us to expect that 
national morality can prevail in exclusion of 
religious principle." 

Now, have our public schools anj^thing to 
do with our national morality, or have they 
not? If they have, then how can the}'' be 
preserved as safe instrumentalities in the form- 
ation of our national character and habits, 
without religious principle, ^4n exclusion of 



106 FATAL POLICY 

religious principle" ? But what more complete 
and perfect exclusion of religious principle, 
than the exclusion of the Bible as a sectarian 
book ? And Y/hat could lay a broader foun- 
dation for national infidelity and immorality, 
than such an excommunication of the Word 
of God? 

The opinion of the framers of our Constitu- 
tion may be known from the following sentence 
in the fourth article in the ordinance for the 
government of the North-west Territory. ^ ' Re- 
ligion, morality, and knowledge, being neces- 
sary to good government and the happiness of 
mankind, schools and the means of education 
shall forever be encouraged." Religion, then, 
as well as morality and knowledge, was, in the 
opinion of these statesmen, an end to be ac- 
complished by the schools, and, of course, relig- 
ion was to be taught in them. Indeed, they 
were of the same opinion with Washington, 
that morality itself cannot be maintained 
without religion. How different from these 
just sentiments, how opposed to them, is the 
rule asserted in these modern days, at the in- 
stigation of a sect, that an impartial system of 



OF THE EXCLUSION OF EELIGION. 107 

public education must be free from any relig- 
ious bias. What a vast distance from the 
opinions and feelings of our fathers we must 
have wandered, to accept of such a canon as 
the basis of our public schools. 

There cannot be such a thing as true relig- 
ion without a religious bias, nor such a thing 
as a religious bias without a bias towards relig- 
ion. The religion which our forefathers con- 
templated and intended as being taught in the 
common schools, was certainly not indifference 
to all religion, nor the treating of all religions 
as alike, nor the studied and formal rejection 
of the Word of God. This is not the way to 
produce a religious influence, nor the way to 
teach either religion or morality ; but it is in 
speaking of education particularly, that Wash- 
ington declared, that reason and experience 
forbid us to expect that national morality can 
prevail in exclusion of religious principle. 
But if you have a studied exclusion of every- 
thing distinctively religious, if you forbid any 
religious bias to such a degree as to shut out 
the Bible itself, on the ground that nothing 
distinctively religious must be admitted, you 



108 FATAL POLICY 

render the teaching of religions principle in 
the schools impossible, jou exclude every 
reference to religion, every acknowledgment 
of Christianity. 

You not only ignore the existence of re- 
ligious principle, but you guard against it, you 
fend it off, you mark it as you would a wild 
beast or a pestilence. The indulgence of a 
boa-constrictor, or of the small-pox among the 
children, could not be more jealously for- 
bidden. In this respect, your schools are like 
an Oriental harem ; the very appearance of the 
slippers of religion indicates the presence of a 
criminal, and the vigilant eunuchs are upon 
you with the bow-string- — a Eoman bow-string 
for the Bible ! Is this the condition to which 
the school system of a generation but one re- 
move from Washington and our revolutionary 
fathers is to be reduced, at the inquisitorial 
dictatorship of Eomish priests? Free public 
schools ! What a burlesque upon the name 
of freedom, where the Bible is carefully shut 
out, where the very Lord's Prayer is branded 
as intolerance and sectarianism, where the 
books and the principles which alone can lay 



OF THE EXCLUSION OF EELIGION. 109 

tlie foundation or teacli the nature of civil and 
religious freedom, are interdicted. It would be 
a suicidal policy for our freedom and our pi- 
ety, if sucli a course should be adopted. It 
would be the most lunatic instance the world 
has even seen of the madness of digging down 
the charcoal foundations of the temple, under 
pretence of providing a universal fuel for the 
fires upon its altars. 

10 



(^kratioit. 

CASE OF THE DEAF AND DUMB. 

A COMMON scliool education at tlie expense 
of tlie State would be based upon a wrong 
principle, if it ignored or excluded any knowl- 
edge admitted to be essentially important for 
all intelligent creatures, everjwliere, under all 
circumstances, as members of tlie State. A 
common school education sliou.ld be such, that 
whatever is essential to the well-being and 
good citizenship of the pupil, should be taught 
there, in its principles at least, should be ac- 
cessible there, as if no other means of instruc- 
tion were to be ever in his power. A common 
school education ought to teach so much of 
Christianity and the Word of God, that a 
child could be saved by it, if he never knew 
any more of it, nor from any other source. 



A COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION. Ill 

A common scliool education onglit not to rely 
upon the hope or possibility of anything es- 
sential to the well-being and good citizenship 
of the pupil, being taught anywhere else, and 
on account of that possibility to exclude that 
vital element. 

There is, in point of fact, a multitude of 
persons, whose children are never taught re- 
ligion at home, not even the existence and at- 
tributes of God, the laws of moral probation 
for mankind, nor even the being of a Saviour. 
They never see a Bible, never hear its lessons, 
never listen to a verse of it. From such, in 
legislating the Bible out of schools^ from a 
professed regard to the largest religious lib- 
erty, you take away the only opportunity of 
coming to a knowledge of the nature of 
Christianity and the Word of God, in the 
most important and critical of all periods for 
laying the foundations of the character. It 
would be treason in the State towards the in- 
telligent and immortal creatures thus thrown 
upon its care, to withhold from them what is 
most essential to their welfare. 

The amount of immigration alone, into our 



112 THE ESSENTIAL REQUISITES 

country, and of the increase in tliis way of a 
popnlation-element needing to be taught, is 
upwards of four hundred thousand a year. 
Of what infinite importance that an education 
which, to say the least, does not ignore and 
exclude Christianity and the Bible, be given 
to these ! Of what importance that the thou- 
sands of children not likely in any other way 
to become acquainted with the Bible at all, 
learn something of it in the common school ; 
learn at least that there is such a volume as 
the "Word of God, and know something of the 
beauty and power of its sacred lessons. It is 
admitted on all hands that we are in great 
danger from the dark and stolid infidelity and 
vicious radicalism of a large portion of the 
foreign immigrating population. What, then, 
can be done to ward off this danger, and how 
can we reach the evil at its roots, applying a 
wise and conservative radicalism to defeat the 
working of that malignant, social, anti-Chris- 
tian poison? How can the children of such 
a population be reached, except in our free 
public schools ? If the Bible be read in them, 
its daily lessons cannot but be attended by the 



m A COMMON- SCHOOL EDUCATION. 113 

Divine blessing, and in many instances may 
beget sucli a reverence for the Word of God, 
and instil sucli a knowledge of its teachings, 
that the infidelity of their home education 
shall be effectually counteracted. And if the 
religious influence that prevails in our best 
school-books be thrown around them, that in- 
fluence, constant and familiar, though in no 
respect sectarian, will be as a guiding and 
transfiguring light in the formation of their 
opinions and the education of their feelings. 

But exclude the Bible from the schools, and 
accompany that exclusion, as to be logically 
consistent you must, with a dephlogistication 
of your school-books, to expurgate from them 
the whole religious element, and where mil 
the children of this class of our population 
learn anything better than the gloomy and 
destructive infidelity of their parents and as- 
sociates ? The Bible does not spring up as a 
guardian angel in the beer-shops, and the ex- 
clusion of the Bible and of all ''religious bias" 
from the common schools is really giving them 
over into the power of the Tempter, without a 
solitary warning in their education that can 
10* 



114 THE ESSENTIAL EEQUISITES 

put them on their guard, without an instruction 
by which, they can distinguish between truth 
and error, without an influence or a weapon 
of protection or defence. 

The State provides for the religious instruc- 
tion of the deaf and dumb. By what right or 
authority can it do this, and not be guilty of 
an intolerant oppression of the consciences of 
those who do not desire such instruction, if 
there be not the same right and authority to 
institute the teaching or reading of the Bible 
in the common schools ? The Institution for 
the Deaf and Dumb is under the same general 
]aws as the common schools, and the people's 
money is appropriated for its support ; and if 
a religious bias, or the reading of the Bible, is 
a wrong to conscience in the public schools, 
so it is there. But who would dare lift up a 
voice against that institution of mercy, on the 
ground that it is sectarian, intolerant, and op- 
pressive to the conscience ? Yet it is but a pub- 
lic school ; and in regard to all knowledge of 
the Word of God, many of the children in our 
streets, who have ears to hear, and tongues to 
ask and to answer, are as destitute and vacant, 



IN A COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION. 115 

and as likely to continue so, if that knowledge 
be not communicated in the common schools, 
as if they were in reality both deaf and dumb. 
Nay, if they were so, and the Bible were ex- 
cluded from the common schools, while it is 
admitted into the schools for the instruction , 
of the deaf and dumb, then they they would 
be far more likely in their misfortune, and by 
the very means of it, to know the Word of 
God, and be saved, than if they possessed the 
common faculties of humanity. 

Take now the simple and affecting descrip- 
tion of the scenes at the last anniversary of 
this institution, and say if there was anything 
in the reported exercises of the pupils that 
could, even in our common schools, have 
justly offended any man's conscience. The 
President of the Institution declared that there 
is ^^ scarcely a State in the Union of any con- 
siderable population and resources, that has 
not fully or in part acknowledged the claims 
of this interesting and unfortunate portion of 
its population to the means of intellectual and 
spiritual life." Intellectual and Spiritual ; this 
is just. But if the deaf and dumb children 



116 THE ESSENTIAL REQUISITES 

need the spiritual as well as intellectual, so do 
all other children thrown upon the State for 
their education ; nay, more, in proportion to 
the more active part they will be called to take 
in the affairs of life and of the country. And 
if the State can, without violation of con- 
science and of right, give the Bible to deaf 
and dumb children in their schools, and ought 
so to do, (which who will deny ?) it can and 
ought, by the same rule, to all the children in 
the common schools ; it would be cruelty and 
oppression to take it away from these, and fa- 
voritism to bestow it upon those. The visitors 
at this Institution were charmed with the 
proofs of success in developing the religious 
sentiment and conscience of the pupils, and 
delighted at the clearness, simplicity, and 
promptness of the replies that had been made 
to questions of a religious import. 

" Who made the world ?" Vv^as the question 
once proposed to a little boy in the Institution. 
Without an instant's delay the chalk had rap- 
idly traced the answer : 

^^ In the beginning Grod created the Heavens 
and the earth." 



IN A COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION. 117 

"Why did Jesus come into tlie world?" 
was the next question proposed. With a smile 
of gratitude the little fellow Avrote in reply : 

" This is a faithful saying, and worthy of 
all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the 
world to save sinners." The astonished visitor, 
desirous of testing the religious nature of the 
pupil to the utmost, ventured at length to ask, 

" Why were you born deaf and dumb, when 
I can both hear and speak?" With the 
sweetest and most touching expression of 
meek resignation on the face of the boy, the 
rapid chalk replied : 

" Even so, Father, for it seemeth good in 
thy sight." 

Now suppose that such a scene, at a public 
examination, and as the result of the reading 
of the Scriptures, had taken place in one of 
our common schools ; who dare pretend or af- 
firm that that would be an intrusion upon the 
rights of conscience, an oppression by the 
State, of those who reject the Scriptures, or an 
over-stepping of the proper sphere of govern- 
ment? 



^rpmtttt fr0m t\)t ^^imt at m iat|. 

Theee is another line of argument to prove 
unanswerably ttiat the State not only may 
justly interfere to appoint religious instruction 
to be given in the common schools, but must 
do so, to be consistent with other statutes and 
appointments for the people. For example : 
The State appoints the formality of an oath to 
be taken on the Bible, for the swearing of 
witnesses, and on many other occasions; it 
is a very common administration by the 
State. Now, if this be anything serious, if it 
be not the gTavest yet most absolute mockery, 
it is a religious reality of the highest and most 
solemn import and authority. But though a 
religious reality, still it is a mockery, if the 
State, having appointed this form of oath by 
law, and provided for its sacredness, do not 



AEGUMENT FROM AN OATH. 119 

provide tlie means of understanding it ; if the 
State exclude from the very elements of a 
common school education, that knowledge, 
that instruction, by which alone it is possible 
to understand it. The children of the State 
should surely be taught what an oath is, if, 
when they grow up to be citizens, they are 
liable to have it administered on occasions of 
the most critical nature and importance. 

But simply to teach the nature of an oath, 
the State must have the power to teach relig- 
ious truth, and must provide for its being 
taught in a common school education. For 
what is the nature of an oath ? An appeal to 
Almighty God, the governor and judge of 
mankind, an appeal on the ground of the 
great doctrines of revealed religion that God 
searches the heart, that we are account- 
able to him, that he will one day bring us into 
judgment for every thought, word, and action, 
and that he will punish the guilty and reward 
the righteous. How can the nature of an 
oath be taught, without teaching the sinful- 
ness of a lie before God, and the certainty of 
his vengeance ? How, without teaching that 



120 ARaUMENT FROM 

for every idle word that men shall speak, they 
shall give account in the Day of Judgment ? 
How can the power of an oath be felt, without 
the knowledge of its sanctions, the knowledge 
of the truth, and holiness, and justice of 
Jehovah, the knowledge that if it be falsely 
taken, all liars are by name excluded from the 
Kingdom of Heaven, and appointed to the 
endurance of God's righteous indignation ? 

Now, these things are religious teachings, 
most important, most invaluable, for the train- 
ing of the conscience and the heart ; and if 
the State have any right to command the oath, 
the State has the same right, and comes under 
the highest obligation, to pro^dde for and ap- 
point such teachings, that her citizens may 
know their commonest forms of duty, and be 
prepared for their sincere and intelligent per- 
formance. And what did Washington say 
upon this very point ? Let us recur to the 
sentence, which he wrote expressly to prove 
the absolute necessity of religion as well as 
morality for the existence and well-being of 
the State, and therefore the necessity of the 
teaching of religion as well as morality. ^^ Let 



THE NATURE OF AN OATH. 121 

it be simply asked," said he, '^ where is the 
security for property, for reputation, for life, 
if the sense of religious obligation desert the 
oaths, which are the instruments of investiga- 
tion in courts of justice?" But that sense 
must desert them, if men are not taught those 
religious truths, by which only the oath can 
be understood in its sacredness, and in the 
knowledge of which alone it is worth any- 
thing. Now, is the State bound to provide 
means for the preparation of the children for 
the obligations and duties of a citizen, in tak- 
ing upon itself the work of their education, 
or is it not ? If any education be given by 
the State, surely it must be such that by 
means of it the children may arrive at the 
knowledge of those obligations and responsi- 
bilities which will rest upon them as members 
of the State. And what an anomaly, what a 
profound and palpable inconsistency, to ap- 
point and enjoin a religious obligation for our 
civil and social life, and at the same time en- 
join the exclusion from our common schools 
of all the peculiar instruction and knowledge 
requisite for performing it I If the State have 
11 



122 AKGUMENT FEOM 

any autliority to proMbit sectarianism in tlio 
common schools, it lias a still higher author- 
ity, and more binding obligation, to provide 
for the teaching of religious truth. The truths 
on which an oath is founded, the State must 
teach. 

The very last occasion on which Daniel 
Webster ever appeared in Faneuil Hall, in 
Boston, he uttered a passage on the nature of 
the work of a popular education, which de- 
serves to be inscribed over the door of every 
common school-house in America : — 

'^ We seek to educate the people. We seek 
to improve men's moral and religious condi- 
tion. In short, we seek to w^ork upon mind 
as well as upon matter. And in working on 
mind, it enlarges the human intellect and 
the human heart. We know that when we 
work upon materials, immortal and imperish- 
able, that they will bear the impress which we 
place upon them, through endless ages to 
come. If we work upon marble, it will 
perish ; if we work upon brass, time will 
efface it. K we rear temples, they will 
crumble to the dust. But if we work ok 



THE JSTATUlli: OF AX OATH. 123 

men's immortal minds — IF WE IMBUE THEM' 
WITH HIGH PRINCIPLES, WITH THE JUST FEAR 

OF God, and of their fellow-men — we 

ENGRAVE ON THOSE TABLETS SOMETHING 
WHICH NO TIME CAN EFFACE, BUT WHICH 
WILL BRIGHTEN AND BRIGHTEN TO ALL ETER- 



INFIDEL ASPECT AND TENDENCY 

OF THE EXCLUSION OF 

It has been the conyiction of some of the 
wisest men that ever lived, that an education 
may be infidel, and therefore immoral, in its 
tendency, withont a shade of positive infidel 
teaching, by the bare fact of entirely ignoring 
and excluding Christianity. Certainly, there 
are no direct moral lessons in mathematics or 
any of the sciences, unless the light of religion 
is brought to play upon them. Morality itself, 
according to the sentiment we have quoted 
from Washington, is based upon religion, and 
if religion be excluded, morality is also. The 
most perfect knowledge of physical law will not 
restrain the passions ; the sanctions of religion 
are essential for that. But really, to ignore 



INFIDEL ASPECT AND TENDENCY. 125 

and exclude religion is to teacli tliat it is not 
necessary, if it be not also directly to teach 
that there is no such thing, no one true re- 
ligion, in regard to which there is any cer- 
tainty that it is the truth, any more than all 
forms of religion under heaven are the truth. 
Is there not, must there not be, necessarily, 
inevitably, an infidel influence in such teach- 
ing? 

There is power and truth in this declaration. 
It is not bigotry, it is not attachment to sec- 
tarianism, but it is true religious knowledge 
and feeling, that produces this sentiment, this 
conviction, on the part of those churches that 
entertain it ; and they are not few. They do 
believe that where you carefully divorce and 
exclude all religious teaching from secular 
teaching, and permit only the last, the incul- 
cation is that of a potential infidelity ; and if 
this becomes a characteristic of our school 
system, and the grand rule for cutting and 
drying it, is to be the careful expulsion of the 
religious element, under politicians for com- 
missioners and superintendents, the churches 
will not support it, and will refuse to be taxed 

ir 



126 INFIDEL ASPECT AND TENDENCY. 

for it. They will never consent tliat the Gov- 
ernment, merely because it allows the people 
to tax themselves for free schools, shall set up 
such a tyrannical expurgation of the Bible 
and religion from the system of the education 
of their children. 

But here you are prompt to answer, algebra 
is not infidel ; reading, writing, arithmetic, are 
not infidel ; there can be no irreligion in one's 
A B C's. No! but if to each one of these 
branches, and to the learning of them, is at- 
tached the prohibition, you shall not couple 
with them any religious teaching, you shall not 
read nor teach the Scriptures along with them ; 
this ban of excommunication leaves a posi- 
tive taint upon the school. The jealousy and 
exclusion of religion and of the Scriptures at- 
taches unconsciously to all the branches taught 
under such an interdiction ; an instinctive re- 
pulsion is taught, on the part of all the school 
exercises, habits, discipline, against religious 
light and liberty. The pressure of such a 
negative may not be felt or acknowledged 
definitely, at present, on any one point ; but 
in the long run, and as a whole, it must be of 



INFIDEL ASPECT AND TENDENCY. 127 

prodigious and pernicious power. It acts as a 
standing, perpetual insinuation, argument, and 
warning, against the Word of God. Taken in 
connection with a multiplicity of other influ- 
ences and efforts of infidelity to weaken the 
hold of the Scriptures on the public mind, the 
mass of the community Ynll be poorly prepared 
to withstand the insidious attack. The general 
voice of the nation will seem to be against the 
Word of God, and it vvill be presented in the 
attitude of an object of the fear and jealousj^ 
of the country. This is an effect quite inevita- 
ble from any such guarded exclusion of it 
from a system of free public education ; any 
candid mind must be convinced of this on a 
moment's reflection. Suppose that in Austria, 
for example, any copy of the American Con- 
stitution, and all allusions to it, and to the 
system of free government founded upon it^ 
were forbidden in all the schools, so that any 
teacher who should undertake to enlighten a 
class concerning it, or to teach the wisdom of 
its principles, would be subject to an ignomin- 
ious dismissal from his ofl&ce ; could it be other- 
wise than that such guarded exclusion should 



128 INFIDEL ASPECT AND TENDENCY. 

impress a general sense of sometMng danger- 
ous and pernicious in that constitution and 
system of government? Would it not be 
passing strange for a people professing a con- 
viction of the supreme excellence of that sys- 
tem, to enact such edicts against it? Could 
the effect be possibly otherwise than injuri- 
ous towards it? There are cases in which a 
studied silence and omission are the greatest 
reproach. 

It is hardly needful to refer to authorities 
on this subject ; it would be superfluous, were 
it not for the amazing extent to which an 
anti-Christian sophistry has carried captive a 
portion of the public mind. '^ The Christian 
principles," says John Foster, '' cannot be true, 
without determining what shall be true in the 
mode of representing all those subjects with 
which they hold a connection. He who has 
sent a revelation to declare the theory of sacred 
truth, and to order the relations of all moral 
sentiments with that truth, cannot give his 
sanction at once to this final constitution, and 
to that which disowns it. God therefore dis- 
owns that, which disowns the religion of 



INFIDEL ASPECT AND TENDENCY. 129 

Christ, and what lie disowns lie condemns, 
thus placing all moral sentiments in the same 
predicament, with regard to the Christian 
economy, in which Jesus Christ placed his 
contemporaries, ^He that is not with me, is 
against me.' " 

''An entire separation of moral science" 
(and consequently of education) '' from re- 
ligion it is hardly possible to preserve, since 
Christianity has decided some moral questions 
on which reason was dubious or silent ; and 
since that final retribution which the New 
Testament has so luminously foreshown, is 
evidently the greatest of sanctions. To make 
no reference, while inculcating moral princi- 
ples, to a judgment to come, after that judg- 
ment has been declared on what has been con- 
fessed to be divine authority, would look like 
systematic irreligion." 

But any reference to such truths, or inculca- 
tion of such lessons, produces a religious bias, 
and is the inculcation of distinctively religious 
truth, though not sectarian. And if God dis- 
owns that which disowns religion, he must 
disown a system of education which rejects it 



130 INFIDEL ASPECT AND TENDENCY. 

from the things to be taught, defrauds the 
mind of its sanctions, and places the creature 
in a state of constant exile from the ^climate 
of the kingdom of Christ. It walls off the 
thoughts from all contact with the eternal re- 
alities of our being, and naturalizes the mind 
to an existence like a dungeon. The unfor- 
tunate objects of such a discipline of jealousy 
against religious truth, remind us of one of Fos- 
ter's illustrations ; '' they are somewhat like the 
inhabitants of those towns within the vast salt 
mines of Poland, who, beholding every object 
in their region by the light of lamps and can- 
dles only, have in their conversation no ex- 
pressions describing things in such aspects as 
never appear but under the lights of heaven." 
Now, connect with this such an extract as 
you may make almost at random from the an- 
nual reports of any of our benevolent socie- 
ties, designed for the good of children, and of 
the poor, as, for example, the last report of 
the Association of New York, stating the 
condition of multitudes of children, who are 
taught nothing of God, nothing of Divine 
truth, nothing of the Saviour of the world, 



INFIDEL. ASPECT AND TENDENCY. 181 

notliing but vagrancy, low cunning, and vice ; 
and suppose a multitude of sucli children 
gathered into a School, from wliich all refer- 
ence to religion, all religious distinctive in- 
struction, all lessons from Divine truth, in re- 
gard to God, and the relations of man to the 
future world, as a world of retribution and 
reward ; and if they get no education but such 
as the State gives them in such a school, in 
what better condition would they be, as re- 
spects ^' the lights of heaven," than that of 
the inhabitants of the mines of Poland ? 

Strange delusion, to think of benefiting the 
children of the poor and vicious, by bringing 
them into schools under the rule of a studied 
exclusion of the Bible, and all religious in- 
struction ; a system of education properly de- 
scribed as wearing the stamp of systematic 
irreligion ! Yet such is precisely the course 
of policy to which this community are urged, 
on the plea of accommodating the school sys- 
tem to the conscience of a sect, the mainten- 
ance of whose power depends on keeping the 
Bible from their children, and their children 
from the knowledge of the Bible ! 



Self-golJtrnment. 

I HAVE at this moment lying before me a 
discourse by a popular preacher, reported in 
one of onr public papers, in which it it pro- 
claimed that in our country, the foundation of 
power in the individual and liberty in the 
masses is self-government, founded on religious 
belief and conscience ; the necessity is forcibly 
and eloquently presented, of ^' religious inspir- 
ation and religious self-control in the indi- 
vidual," and it is declared that ^^ if these be 
lost or corrupted, our expiring anguish will 
surpass that of any nation that ever lived." 
This position may be completely maintained ; 
it is almost a truism concerning the nature of 
republican freedom, that it is impossible with- 
out the habit of self-government. But who 



EELIGIOUS SELF-GOVERNMENT. 133 

ever heard of religious inspiration and religious 
self-control without tlie knowledge of the 
Word of God ? And where shall this sense 
and knowledge of religion and of the Scrip- 
tures, presented as of such vital importance to 
the preservation of ou.r country's liberties, be 
taught ? Can it be safely left to the churches, 
and to those schools where sectarian tenets are 
taught ? The answer instantly presents itself 
that, as a general rule, the churches and those 
schools are patronized or frequented by those 
only, or mainlj^, who have the Bible taught in 
their families, and that, moreover, there are 
not enough of such churches and schools to 
accommodate a fourth — no, not an eighth-part 
of the community. 

The argument in behalf of the very exist- 
ence of free public schools, is an argument for 
the necessity of the Bible in them. The 
churches and the parochial schools are glar- 
ingly inadequate; perhaps not more than a 
sixth part of the families in our country ever 
attend any church, or any other schools than the 
free schools. Consequently, five-sixths of our 
whole youthful population are left unprovided 
12 



134 ARGUMENT FROM THE NECESSITY OF 

with fhe knowledge of tlie Bible and any re- 
ligious instruction, if you exclude it from the 
free public schools. Consequently, if it be so 
excluded, the very idea of it will come to five- 
sixths of our children only as a thing to be 
guarded against, and of which they know little 
else but this only, that it is forbidden in the 
public schools. Nor would 1;his interdiction 
be particularly likely to make them inquire 
for it elsewhere. 

The inconsistency of such a course is man- 
ifest. Our whole possibility of safety and 
prosperity as a country is founded on habits 
and influences of religious self-control, and 
yet, the only book that teaches such control 
without sectarianism, and provides the ele- 
ments for it, forbidden in the free public 
schools, and shut out from the knowledge of 
nve-sixths of the people's children! Lan- 
guage cannot state stronglj^ enough the gross- 
ness of this inconsistency, nor the greatness of 
the danger from such a course. Then, too, 
the evil which needs to be diminished, of such 
a rivalry between private schools and the free 
school system, as places them at antagonism, 



RELIGIOUS SELF-aOVERNMEISTT. 135 

and presents the private schools as the more 
moral, more respectable, more select and safe, 
both for the mind and heart, the manners and 
morals of the pupil, — that evil wonld be 
greatly increased ; for any parent of sane and 
unprejudiced mind would prefer, though at 
far greater cost, to send a child to school 
where the Word of God is free, and religious 
instruction at least is possible. 

If you undertake to educate all the children 
of the State, to bring them all together in 
harmony, in one and the same grand system, 
that all may have the advantages of each, and 
each of all, that every division may be avoided 
which has the effect of placing one portion of 
the children in a higher and better system, 
and another less favored portion in a poorer 
and more limited system ; if you would thus 
dispense with the necessity of particular and 
private schools, for those who are not satisfied 
with the governmental schools, because they 
do but half educate the child, in educating the 
mind only ; then must you combine, in your 
common school system, all the requisites for a 
thorough education of the whole being. You 



136 AEGUMENT FROM THE NECESSITY OF 

cannot leave out the moral and religions ele- 
ment, and satisfy the people ; they will not 
long, nor nnitedly, sustain a system with so 
glaring and radical a deficiency. If yon 
would provide an education for all, and 
equally, then must you level up^ not doivn. 

If you demand that the private and pa- 
rochial schools shall throw away their Bible, 
and its precious religious truth, its sacred les- 
sons, merely to give a grander support to your 
schools without the Bible, your schools divorced 
from religion, and excluding it, you will de- 
mand in vain ; j'ou can find no such patriotism 
as that in the Church of Christ in America. 
If you divorce your schools from the Bible 
and religion, you will divorce them from the 
affections, the respect, the support, and the 
patronage of Christians ; and so divorced, the 
common school sj^stem cannot stand. They 
who love the Bible will not consent to have 
the education of their children levelled down, 
to meet the merely secular and contracted 
standard of those who exclude it. They who 
believe and declare that the freedom of relig- 
ious truth alone can render an education truly 



RELIGIOUS SELF-GOVERNMENT. 137 

free and compreliensiYe, will never consent to 
put tlieir children under a system of jealousy, 
restraint, and fear, in the presence of Divine 
truth, and in the guarded exclusion of it. 

It is singular to see, in the same breath, an 
utterance of the conviction, or professed con- 
viction, that it is to the supremacy of religious 
principle and religious truth in the minds and 
hearts of our fathers that we owe the birth 
and establishment of our admirable institu- 
tions of civil and religious liberty ; that it was 
their sense of dependence upon God, and their 
earnest seeking of Divine guidance, and their 
deep impression of the same principles on 
their children, that rendered those institutions, 
or could alone render them, permanent ; — and 
then an utterance of contempt or of serious 
argument against the Bible and religious in- 
struction in our schools, just as if there were 
no more connection between our future pros- 
perity and the truth by which our fathers 
prospered, than between the harvest which 
was reaped a hundred years ago, and that 
which we confidently believe v/ill cover the 
hill-sides of New England next year. Have 
12* 



138 EELIGIOUS SELF-GOVERNMENT. 

we arrived at such, a religious state, are we so 
permeated already with the knowledge and 
the influence of religion, that the process of 
instruction in divine truth may safely stop, 
the Bible be turned out of school, and religion 
exorcised from the common school education, 
as a superfluous or intruding visitor with 
whom we have no longer any necessary con- 
cern? 

It is admitted that we owe our present high 
prosperity, our good order, ou.r civil and re- 
ligious freedom, to the knov/ledge and influ- 
ence of the Bible among all classes. And 
can we now afford to throw down the ladder, 
by which we have ascended to these blessings, 
and leave others to gain them as they may ? 
Can we safeh^ rely upon an uninstructed gener- 
ation to keep them, or even to appreciate 
their value ? Or is there really such an inde- 
fatigable and all-conquering zeal for teaching 
religion to the children of the masses out of 
school, as will supply the want of it in the 
common school education ? 



|IIttstrati0ns torn ^wtlanlj. 

ARGUMENT BY DR. CANDLISH. OPINION OF BUNSEN. 

Mr. Gladstone of England recently de- 
clared, in speaking of the happy union of re- 
ligions and secular instruction in the schools 
in Scotland, that there is the closest and the 
happiest harmony between the scientific train- 
ing of the intellect and the religious training 
of the heart ; that he commits a profanation 
against God and against human nature who 
would attempt to dissever them ; and that 
where the truths of the Christian faith are 
fully taught and rightly received, there you 
will best and most fruitfully pursue the work 
of that temporal and secular training, which is 
the specific object of the school. In the ac- 
knowledgment and light of the Christian faith, 
and not in the exclusion of it, that specific ob- 



140 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM SCOTLAND. 

ject is to be pursued ; for surely one specific 
result, if not design, of a school from which 
the Christian religion is by law excluded, will 
be the product of infidelity. 

Dr. Candlish, in speaking recently in Edin- 
burgh, on the importance of retaining the re- 
ligious element in the common schools, estab- 
lished the point that that element may be 
introduced without sectarianism, and without 
offence to any conscience. The children were 
permitted to avail themselves of the rehgious 
instruction in the schools or not according to 
the pleasure of their parents ; but it was found 
that the Eoman Catholics themselves chose 
the whole course. '' Dr. Candlish then showed 
the non-sectarian character of the education 
given in the schools, as indicated by the fact 
that it appeared from the returns of 568 of the 
schools, that there were in these schools 31,999 
scholars whose parents belonged to the Free 
Church, 10,054 belonging to the Established 
Church, 614 Eoman Catholics, and 9,223 be- 
longing to other denominations. It is a prin- 
ciple of our scheme, said Dr. Candlish, as I 
believe it is generally in schools in Scotland, 



ILLUSTRATIONS FROM SCOTLAND. 141 

that parents may withdraw their children from 
religious instruction altogether. They may 
avail themselves of any one branch of educa- 
tion, and decline to avail themselves of any 
other branch. That liberty is conceded in 
most schools in Scotland. I think it a proper 
principle, and one which greatly facilitates the 
right settlement of the question. Of the 618 
Eoman Catholics attending our schools, I have 
not learned an instance — and I do not believe 
there is one — of an application for the exemp- 
tion of their children from religious instruc- 
tion. I believe they generally conform to the 
whole course of education, unless some priest 
conies over from the land of intolerance with 
fresh zeal. But be that as it may. The 
second statement I have to make on this point 
is this : — We selected 75 schools in the large 
towns of Scotland, and found that there were 
in them 4,658 children of parents belonging 
to the Free Church, 1,904 belonging to the 
Established Church, 212 Eoman Catholics, and 
3,357 of other denominations — in all, 4,658 
of Free Church children, and 5,487, or a con- 
siderable majority, belonging to other denomi- 



142 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM SCOTLAND. 

nations ; so that our scheme manifestly bears 
on the face of it the character of thorough 
Catholicism, thorough unsectarianism." 

This is a most important and impressive 
testimony ; and not less important, and appli- 
cable to our own case, is the principle justly 
laid down by Dr. Candlish, that as to the 
matter of religious instruction, the Scottish 
educational traditions and hereditary prin- 
ciples of education ought to be regarded ; *^ it 
was the right of the Scottish people, for there 
were such hereditary educational principles in 
Scotland^ as made it easy to bring in a sys- 
tem of education that would harmonize all, 
and place education on a religious, and yet 
non-sectarian basis. There ought to be, in 
Scotland, a national system, and that system 
ought to be, according to the hereditary tradi- 
tions of Scotland, the use and wont of Scot- 
land, in educational matters, since Scotland 
was a reformed country." 

Now, in regard to ourselves, this right is 
still clearer and more positive. The heredi- 
tary educational principle with us always has 
been the Bible at the foundation, and religious 



ILLUSTEATIONS FROM SCOTLAND. 143 

instruction/rom the Bible. It is no new thing. 
The innovation wonld be the exclusion of the 
Bible, a tyrannical defiance and destruction 
of all our usages from the outset, at the de- 
mand of a single sect. The Bible in the 
schools has been the custom and common law 
of the schools from their origin. The Bible 
ousted from the schools is a new and oppress- 
ive law sought to be forced upon us by a 
particular political and ecclesiastical party. 
"We have the right of our forefathers, and of 
habit and law from the beginning downwards, 
as well as the right of God and duty, for the 
Bible in the schools ; and none shall take it 
from us. Dr. Candlish would have the ques- 
tion so settled in Scotland (and it is the right 
view) as that it shall not be in the power of 
local boards so much as to raise the question 
whether there shall be religious teaching; 
there always has been, and it ought not to be 
in the power of any to say that there shall not 
be. "Let there be exceptional cases, if you 
choose, but surely, the national mind of Scot- 
land being clear, all but unanimous, it will be 
a grievous hardship, a gross outrage, if we be 



144 ILLUSTEATIONS FEOM SCOTLAND. 

hindered from getting a settlement of tlie na- 
tional question on that footing, or be forced 
into a settlement of the question on a footing 
that shall leave out the whole matter of re- 
ligion, by some scruples in certain quarters 
about the recognition in an Act of Parliament 
that there should be religious teaching, and 
that it should be conducted in the manner 
hitherto in use." 

Dr. Candlish then declares his fear that we 
are on the eve of a very serious struggle as 
regards education ; and he goes on to bear 
testimony against the views of those who 
would exclude the Bible and all religious bias, 
and would base the system of education solely 
on the broad principles of '^secularism." He 
refers to some productions by those gentlemen, 
and then says, that it ''seems to be the faith 
of those parties that the mere knowledge of 
the physical laws of nature will secure the 
moral and social well-being of this great com- 
munity. That radical error runs through all 
the productions to which I have referred. 
There seems to be a fixed belief in the minds 
of those men, that simply to know the physical 



ILLUSTRATIONS FROM SCOTLAND. 145 

laws of naturej the laws that regulate demand 
and supply, is sufficient, — ^in short, that physics 
and political econom)^ are enough to secure 
the social and moral well-being of the com- 
munity. In the face of such announcements 
as these, I do humbly think that even some 
of our friends who have difficulties about the 
action of the State in religious matters, might 
pause a little in this question of national edu- 
cation, and consider whether, in these circum- 
stances, and in the view of these influences, it 
might not be well to have all the security 
which a most thorough recognition of the re- 
ligious element can give, that the rising gen- 
eration shall not be left to the tender mercies 
of those who would teach them physics and 
political econony, and say that it is enough to 
make them good citizens and good men." 

The evil and the danger here referred to 
are precisely the same with those against 
which we were warned by the foresight of 
Washington, when he said that we could not 
hope for the permanence and success of our 
institutions, in the exclusion of religious prin- 
ciple from our systems of education. It was 
13 



146 ILLUSTEATIONS FKOM SCOTLAND. 

the voice of a wise, discerning, and sincere 
patriotism, and no sectarian prejudice ; for 
wlio will dare accuse Washington of sectarian- 
ism or intolerance, in his farewell address to 
his countrymen? 

In this connection the words of the Cheva- 
lier Bunsen are worthy to be quoted. The 
nations of the present age^ says Bunsen, 
^Svant not less religion, but more :" they want 
it "to reform the social relations of life, begin- 
ing with the domestic, and culminating in the 
political ; an honest hona fide foundation, deep 
as the human mind^ and a structure free and 
organic as nature. This aim cannot be at- 
tained without national efforts, Christian edu- 
cation, free institutions, and social reforms. 
Then no zeal will be called Christian which is 
not hallowed by charity, no faith Christian 
which is not sanctioned by reason. Christi- 
anity enlightens now only a small portion of 
the globe, but it cannot be stationary, it will 
advance, and is already advancing, trium- 
phantly over the whole earth, in the name of 
Christ, and in the light of the spirit."^ 

* Hyppolitus and his age, vol. 2, p. 116. 



ILLUSTEATIONS FROM SCOTLAND. 147 

Mr. Gladstone said, speaking of Scotsmen, 
and the natural poverty of their country, and 
the effect of education in placing Scotland in 
a position among nations second to no other ; 
three or four hundred years ago, they were a 
nation in the rear of Europe ; they are now in 
front, in the van. The reason for this pro- 
digious and astonishing change was to be found 
in the fact, that for two centuries the people of 
Scotland had had the advantage of schools 
far beyond any other country, far beyond 
England ; and every laboring man in Scotland 
had had the means of sending his children to 
them. 

But they were not schools destitute of re- 
ligious bias ; if they had been without the 
Scriptures, in vain would they have been in- 
stituted. They, no more than the schools of 
New England, founded by our Puritan Ances- 
tors, were left without the Bible ; and it is to 
the Bible in schools, high and low, common 
and select, that Scotland, as well as New 
England, owes her high position. Her inde- 
pendent rugged peasantry, and the inhabitants 
of her mountain homes, would never other- 



148 ILLUSTKATIONS FROM SCOTLAND. 

wise liave maintained their unconquered and 
unconquerable religious patriotism, their spirit 
of civil and religious liberty. 

In this connection the interesting fact may 
be named, relative to the advancing character 
and position of the Sandwich Islands, wholly 
based from the outset on the Word of Grod, 
that at an early period the teachers of the com- 
mon schools finding a deficiency of school- 
books, and that the New Testament was the 
cheapest as well as the best class-book they 
could employ, adopted that universally ; and 
to the powerful redeeming and enlightening 
influence thus daily exerted, the rapidly im.- 
proving character and increasing attainments 
of the children were to be attributed. 

Miss Edgworth tells us that formerly there 
existed a law in Scotland, which obliged every 
farrier who, through ignorance or drunkenness 
pricked a horse's foot in shoeing him, to de- 
posit the price of the horse until he was sound, 
to furnish the owner with another, and in case 
the horse could not be cured, the farrier was 
doomed to indemnify the injured owner. At 
the same rate of punishment, asks Miss Edg- 



ILLUSTKATIONS FROM SCOTLAND. 149 

■worth, wlia.t indemnification should be de- 
manded from a careless or ignorant preceptor ?^ 
We may add, suppose that he had neglected 
to fasten the nails so that the first hard piece 
of road the horse had to travel, his shoes 
wonld be knocked ofi^, and Sis feet made in- 
curably lame for want of protection. The 
security of good principles is what we want in 
education, and it can be found only in the 
religion of the Bible ; and that system which 
neglects or wilfully refuses to provide those 
fastenings, the nails of divine truth, is justly 
chargable with all the consequences. 

* Practical Education, vol. 1. p. 202. 
13* 



IwsMttatiffn 0f tilt Sttbjut 1)2 |0|it iasttx. 

In arguing with cliaracteristic energy and 
power for a sclieme of popular education, Jolin 
Foster argues with equal power that religious 
instruction should form a material part of it. 
He exposes the miserable absurdity of the plan 
of divorcing education from religion, and 
teaching the latter as a separate thing. He 
shows the importance, the duty, of combining 
religious with other information, and thus ren- 
dering it familiar and natural, a companion of 
every-day life, and not a formalistic god, or 
influence of Sundays only, or of Sunday 
schools. Eeligion must not be forced upon 
the mind, or presented by itself as a mere 
catechetical speculation or abstraction, but 
must be a daily companion of other more at- 
tractive knowledge, because it requires so 



PEESENTATION OF THE SUBJECT. 151 

mucL. care and address to present it in an at- 
tractive light ; and it is desirable to combine 
it with other subjects natarallymore engaging, 
and with associations that are most familiar 
and pleasing to the thoughts. 

The question being how to bring the people 
by the ordinary means of education to a com- 
petent knowledge of religious truth, we have 
to consider the fittest \Yaj, "And if," says 
Foster, ^' in attentively studying this, there be 
any who come to ascertain that the right ex- 
pedient is a bare illustration of religious in- 
struction, disconnected, one system, from the 
illustrative aid of other knowledge, divested 
of the modification and attraction of associated 
ideas derived from subjects less uncongenial 
with the natural feelings, they really may take 
the satisfaction of having ascertained one thing 
more, namely, that human nature has become 
at last so mightily changed, that it may be left 
to work itself right very soon, as to the affair 
of religion, with little further trouble of 
theirs." 

While, therefore, this great writer insists 
upon the mental cultivation of the masses by 



152 PEESENTATIOK OF THE SUBJECT 

all means, at all hazards, accounting all knowl- 
edge as being absolutely valuable, an appre- 
hension of things as they are, and tending to 
prevent delusion, and to remove the obstacles, 
some of them at least, in the way of right 
volitions ; yet he maintains that never, in any 
case, should knowledge be separated from 
religious truth. 

"We are not heard," says he, "insisting on 
the advantages of increased knowledge and 
mental invigoration among tbe people, uncon- 
nected with the inculcation of religion. The 
zealous friends of popular education consider 
rehgion (besides being itself the primary and 
infinitely the most important part of knowl- 
edge) as a principle indispensable for securing 
the full henefit of all the rest. It is desired and 
endeavored, that the understanding of these 
opening minds may be taken possession of by 
just and solemn ideas of their relation to the 
Eternal, Almightj^ Being; that they may be 
taught to apprehend it as an awful reality, that 
they are perpetually under His inspection; 
and, as a certainty, that they must at length 
appear before Him in judgment, and join, in 



BY JOHN FOSTEE. 153 

anotlier life, tlie conseqiieiices of what tliey 
are in spirit and conduct here. It is to be im- 
pressed on them that his will is the supreme 
law; that his declarations are the most mo- 
mentous truth known on earth ; and his favor 
and condemnation the greatest good and evil. 
And it is wished and endeavored to be by the 
light of this divine wisdom, that they are dis- 
ciplined in other parts of knowledge ; so that 
nothing they learn may be detached from all 
sensible relation to it, or have a tendency con- 
trary to it. Thus it is sought to. be secured, 
that as the pupil's mind grov^rs stronger, and 
multiplies its resources, and he therefore has 
necessarily more power and m^eans for what is 
wrong, there may be luminously presented 
to him, as if celestial eyes visibly beamed 
upon him, the most solemn ideas that can en- 
force what is right." 

Now, let us take the brief description of 
such an education presented by Foster, as an 
approximation towards the only true ideal of 
a just education, an education which the State 
that undertakes to educate, is pledged to pro- 
vide for its children, and let us ask if there be 



154 PRESENTATION OF THE SUBJECT 

anything in it tliat can rightly be charged 
as sectarian, or excluded on that ground? 
Eather, is not an education of the conscience, 
in all knowledge, under the fear of God, and 
with a constant reference to Him, the most 
certain way to prevent sectarianism, and to 
bring together all the members of such a 
school, under such a discipline, as children of 
one common Parent, united in Him ? 

'' Such is the discipline meditated," contin- 
ues Foster, ^' for preparing the children to 
pursue their individual welfare, and act their 
part as members of the community. They 
are to be trained in early life to diligent em- 
ployment of their faculties, tending to strength- 
en them, regulate them, and give their possess- 
ors the power of effectually using them. They 
are to be exercised to form clear, correct no- 
tions, instead of crude, vague, delusive ones. 
During this progress, and in connection with 
many of its exercises, their duty is to be in- 
culcated on them in the various forms in 
which they will have to make a choice be- 
tween right and wrong in their conduct 
towards society. There will be reiteration 



BY JOHN FOSTER. 155 

of lessons on justice, prudence, inoffensive- 
ness, love of peace, estrangement from the 
counsels and leagues of vain and bad men ; 
hatred of disorder and violence, a sense of the 
necessity of authoritative public institutions 
to prevent these evils, and respect for them, 
while honestly administered to this end. All 
this is to be taiight, in many instances direct- 
ly, in others by reference to confirmation, 
from the Holy Scriptures, from which author- 
ity, will also be impressed, all the while, the 
principles of religion. And religion, while 
its grand concern is with the state of the soul 
towards God and eternal interests^ yet takes 
every principle and rule of morals under its 
peremptory sanction ; making the primary ob- 
ligation and responsibility be towards God, of 
everything that is a duty with respect to men. 
So that, with the subjects of this education, 
the sense of propriety shall be conscience ; the 
consideration of how they ought to be regulat- 
ed in their conduct, as a part of the commu- 
nity, shall be the recollection that their Master 
in heaven dictates the laws of that conduct, 



156 PEESENTATION OF THE SUBJECT. 

and will judicially hold them amenable for 
every part of it." 

"And is not a discipline thus addressed to 
the purpose of fixing religious principles in 
ascendency, as far as that difficult object is 
within the power of discipline, and of infus- 
ing a salutary tincture of them into whatever 
else is taught, the right way to bring up citi- 
zens faithful to all that deserves fidelity in the 
social compact ?"^ 

* Foster on Popular Ignorance, c. 3. 



The simplest elements of Moral Science 
cannot be taught without a religious bias. It 
is impossible to ignore or exclude Christianity, 
or place it on the same level with false relig- 
ions, treating all alike, and at the same time 
instruct the pupil in the truths of moral phi- 
losophy. If you would make the subject of 
morals a subject of study at all in the common 
schools, you are absolutely compelled to make 
choice of some system ; and unless you take 
the remnants of Pagan philosophy for a text- 
book, you must go upon the groLind of Chris- 
tianity ; and you cannot advance a step with- 
out breaking that law of impartiality, by 
whicli it is asserted, that the State can have 
nothing to do with religious instruction, but 
is bound to reject the Bible, and all distinctive- 
14 



158 ARGUMENT FROM 

ly religious truth. Morality itself, cannot pos- 
sibly be taught without distinctively religious 
truth, so that this alleged rule of impartiality 
would exclude morality as well as religion 
from the common schools. 

As an illustration of this, we will merely 
take, from the Course of Instruction in the 
Central High School, in Philadelphia, one sin- 
gle section among many, of questions at a 
semi-annual examination, the matter of the 
section being moral science. The pupil is re- 
quired to state what is Conscience, and to 
prove its supremacy with the effect of habit 
on moral actions, and the respects in which 
the moral constitution of man is observed to 
be imperfect, and how those defects are to be 
remedied. 

Division A; Prof, Kirhpatrich — 1. What 
is meant by ethics, and how is the science di- 
vided ? — 2. "What is meant by the terms rela- 
tions and obligations, as used in your text- 
book? — 3. What are the principal relations 
existing between God and man ? — 4. Explain 
the rights and obligations arising from those 
relations. — 5. Prove the existence of a con- 



THE NATURE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 159 

science. — 6. Wliat is meant by natural relig- 
ion ? — 7. Explain the relations existing be- 
tween natural and revealed religion.- — 8. How 
may we learn our duty from the doctrine of 
general consequences ? — 9. How may we learn 
our duty from natural religion, or the light of 
nature? — 10. How may we learn our duty 
from the Scriptures ? 

Now, unless, for the sake of excluding all 
religious bias, we teach sl false system of mor- 
als in the pubhc schools, the merest outline of 
any true system will show that it is absolutely 
impossible to teach morality, without at the 
same time teaching a distinctive religion ; and 
this is impossible, without a direct religious 
bias. 

It seems almost superfluous to dwell in de- 
tail on this argument. And yet, a plausible 
sophistry has been so widely spread, and the 
right of Government to administer a system 
of education at all, either moral or religious, 
is so stoutly denied in some quarters, that it 
becomes necessary. The objection from the 
danger of sectarianism is thus presented and 
disposed of by Dr. Humphrey, the former 



160 AEGUMENT FEOM 

President of Amlierst College, in a lecture 
before tlie American Institute of Instruction : 
^^ There is, I am aware, in the minds of 
some warm and respectable friends of popular 
education, an objection against incorporating 
religious instruction into the system, as one 
of its essential elements. It cannot, they 
think, be done without bringing in along with 
it the evils of sectarianism. If this objection 
could not be obviated, it would, I confess, have 
great weight in my own mind. It supposes 
that if any religious instruction is given, the 
distinctive tenets of some particular denom- 
ination must be inculcated. But is this at all 
necessary ? Must we either exclude religion 
altogether from our common schools, or teach 
some one of the various creeds vfhich are em- 
braced by as many different sects in the eccle- 
siastical calendar? Surely not. There are 
certain great moral and religious principles, in 
which all denominations are agreed, such as 
the ten commandments, our Saviour's golden 
rule, everything, in short, which lies within 
the whole range of duty to Grod and duty to 
our fellow-men. I should be glad to know 



THE NATURE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 161 

what sectarianism tliere can be in a school- 
master's teaching my cWldren the first and 
second tables of the moral laW' — ^to ' love the 
Lord their God with all their heart, and their 
neighbor as themselves' — in teaching them to 
keep the Sabbath holy, to honor their parents, 
not to swear, nor drink, nor lie, nor cheat, 
nor steal, nor covet. Verily, if this is what 
any mean by sectarianism, then the more we 
have of it in onr common schools, the better. 
' It is a lamentation, and shall be for a lamen- 
tation,' that there is so little of it. I have not 
the least hesitation in saying, that no instructor, 
whether male or female, ought ever to be em- 
ployed, vrho is not both able and willing to 
teach morality and religion in the manner 
which I have just alluded to. Were this 
faithfully done in all the primary schools of 
the nation, our civil and religious liberties^ 
and all our blessed institutions, would be in- 
comparably safer than they are now. The 
parent who saj^s, I do not send my child to 
school to learn religion, but to be taught read- 
ing, and writing, and grammar, knows not 
**what manner of spirit he is of." It is very 
14* 



162 ARGUMENT FROM 

certain that such, a father will teach his chil- 
dren anything but religion at home ; and is it 
right that they should be left to grow up as 
heathens in a Christian land? If he says to 
the schoolmaster, I do not wish you to make 
my son an Episcopalian, a Baptist, a Presby- 
terian, or a Methodist, very well. This is not 
the schoolmaster's business. He was not hired 
to teach sectarianism. But if the parent means 
to say, I do not send my child to school to 
have you teach him to fear God, and keep his 
commandments, to be temperate, honest and 
true, to be a good son and a good man, then 
the child is to be pitied for having such a 
father ; and with good reason might we trem- 
ble for ail that we hold most dear, if such re- 
monstrances were to be multiplied and to pre- 
vail." 

It is argued by Eomanists that there can be 
no greater fallacy than to suppose that because 
it is for the interest of the State that its citizens 
should be enlightened and virtuous, therefore 
it is the duty or business of the State to make 
them wise and virtuous by education. Ko- 
manism would gladly, were it possible, take 



THE NATUKE OF MOEAL SCIENCE. 163 

this right and duty from the State, and vest it 
only in the Priests ; and then, and thus, the 
children might universally be kept in darkness, 
and Eomanism might prevail. 



fljjjttitfn tl]at tilt %mmuU m ^uhh^s, 

But here the objector meets iis, and assumes 
that if the Bible be not excluded, the Roman- 
ists will, and that the Bible had better be shut 
out, than the Eomanists shut out. To this it 
would be sufficient to say, that if the Bible be 
excluded, a vastly greater number who require 
the Bible, and have an unquestionable right to 
it, will be shut out, and that the Bible had 
better be admitted, than the friends of the 
Bible be excluded. Those who demand the 
Bible are ten to one compared with those who 
reject it ; and those who would be conscien- 
tiously excluded from the schools, if the Bible 
were excluded, are at least five to one, com- 
pared with those who would be driven away 
by its admission. Yet the insulting demand 



OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 165 

for its exclusion is a demand that for the sake 
of gratifying one million, and gathering in a 
portion of their children into schools from 
which religion is driven out, you shall disre- 
gard the rights of ten millions, and compel 
them either to establish other schools, or else 
to submit to an education for their children, 
from which the Bible and religious truths are 
expelled. Shall the two millions who reject 
the Bible, rule the twenty who require it, and 
shall the rights of the twenty be sacrificed to 
meet the prejudices of the two, or shall the 
vast and overwhelming majority be permitted 
to retain the Bible, without injury to the 
rights of any ? Shall a very small minority 
be admitted to spoil an education for the ma- 
jority, or shall the vast majority be admitted 
to vitalize and perfect an education for them- 
selves and for all who will avail themselves 
of it? Shall the conscience of the majority 
or that of the minority rule? We have al- 
ready settled that question. 

There are two false assumptions in the ob- 
jection ; first, that if the Bible be not excluded 
the Eomanists will be shut out ; and second, 



166 OBJECTIONS ANSWEEED, 

that if the Bible he exclnded, you can in that 
way induce them to come in. They will 
neither be shut out by admitting the Bible, 
nor will they be drawn in by excluding the 
Bible. They wish^ indeed, to get the Bible 
out, and so to do the schools all the injury in 
their power ; but those who oppose the Bible 
have no intention of supporting the free school 
system at any rate. The Bible of the schools 
is not the source of their objection to them, 
but \hQ freedom of the schools, and the inter- 
mingling of Romish and Protestant children, 
in such a manner as to break down these bar- 
riers of cast and prejudice, by which a church- 
despotism is so powerfully sustained. Their 
effort against the Bible is but a battering-ram 
or Eoman Testudo^ under cover of which they 
advance against the whole system, and mean 
to break it up. 

Besides, the Eomanists are not shut out, in 
any case, but have perfect freedom of ad- 
mission, if they will. If Haman and Mordecai 
are both invited to the king's feast, and if 
Haman, coming to the door, finds that Mordecai 
is to be one of the guests, and indeed sees him 



OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 167 

just entering on the other side of the way, and 
retires in a huff, saying, I will not be present 
at the same feast with Mordecai, nor eat salt 
with him, whose fault is it ? Who makes the 
exclusion ? Can he justly say that the king 
has shut him out, because Mordecai was in- 
vited? It is his own angry, envious, and 
inimical feelings that have shut him out ; and 
was it the duty of the king to legislate in be- 
half of those injurious feelings, or to set up 
new sumptuary regulations to please his mal- 
ice? Are hatred and prejudice proper things 
to be fostered and protected by legislation, 
which, at the same moment that it protects 
and sustains the prejudice, legislates against 
those who happen to be its unfortunate ob- 
jects. 

Moreover, let us next see what use the Eo- 
manists themselves would make of this ex- 
clusion. They demand the Bible to be shut 
out, on the pretence that it is a bad book, a 
sectarian book, a Protestant book. Accord- 
ingly, you put the excommunicating brand 
upon it, and shut it out. What language does 
that prohibition speak to the children ? What 



168 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 

will the Eomisli parents and tlie priests say to 
tlie youtliful members of their flocks, when 
they desire to guard them against the Bible ? 
"What could they ask, for argument against it, 
better than this fact, that it is not permitted to 
be read or taught in schools ? My children, 
they may say, it stands to reason, that if the 
Bible were a good book, they who tell you 
that it is, would permit it to be taught to their 
children. But the Protestants themselves have 
shut it out ; they do not suffer it to be read, 
and of course it cannot be fit to be read. A 
book of their own, which even the Protestants 
excommunicate, must be a bad book indeed ! 
Never touch it ! 

Then again, to others they will say. Behold 
these godless schools ! These Protestants 
have a religion, which they have the impu- 
dence to assert is better than ours, and yet 
they dare not teach it to their children ! It 
can surely not be deemed very sacred by those, 
who on considerations of expediency, consent 
to keep it from their children, consent to ex- 
communicate it from the public schools. 
Godless, atheistic, worthless ! We will have 



OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 169 

nothing to do ^vitli such an education ; we 
cannot, and will not, send our children to 
such places ! And here they would find not 
a few of every faith, who would join with 
them. For what parent, who reverences the 
Word of God, and believes in the vital import- 
ance of its religious instructions, would con- 
sent to send his children to schools, from 
which the Word of God, and all religious in- 
struction, are carefully, zealously, and bj 
legislation excluded ? 

But now as to the reality. Facts have al- 
read}^ shown, and daily prove, both in this 
country, and in Scotland, and in Prussia, that 
many Romish children will still go to the 
schools with the Bible in them ; and would 
not go any more frequently or willingly with 
the Bible out of them ; and surely, if we could 
get one-half educated wiHi the Bible, it were 
better than the whole without. Milton said 
truly that God care's more for the complete 
training and growth of one virtuous person, 
than the restraint of ten vicious. Eestraint is 
all that we can hope for without the Scriptures ; 
no religious principle is possible, but with and 

15 



170 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 

by them. The theory and legislation that re- 
ject them, must, to be consistent, reject all 
religions bias, all religious teaching. This 
would be to act upon the principle of doing 
evil that good may come ; nay, far worse than 
even that ; it would be doing evil (for certainly 
the withholding of the Bible and of religious 
instruction from the young is doing evil : he 
that withholdeth corn^ the people shall curse 
him ; how much more he that steals the bread 
of life from the children), I say it would be 
doing evil, that an evil prejudice may not be 
offended, but gratified; and in order that a 
very few, comparatively, may be kept from 
contact with the Word of God, who hate that 
Word, it is doing the evil of keeping vast 
multitudes from it, who desire and need it. 
Under pretence of alluring the Eomish chil- 
dren into the common schools by excluding 
the Bible, you are just snatching the Bread of 
Life from the milhons of youthful hands held 
out for it, in order to gratify the comparative 
few who wish to be without it. 

But, after all, it is not so much a jealousy 
against the Word of God, that instigates this 



OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 171 

exclusive policy, as it is the imwillingness of 
Eomanists to have their children mingle freely 
with the children of Protestants, in the same 
education, under the same religious light. 
While all other denominations lay aside their 
sectarian prejudices at the door of the school- 
house, and rejoice to mingle as one family 
under the same light of God's Word, the Eo- 
man Catholic sect alone carry their sectarian 
prejudices into the school-house, and would 
force all others into a compliance with their 
rule. The truth is, they are opposed to such 
a common school education as threatens to 
break down the barriers of sect, and of priestly 
and canon lavf , and to mingle the children of 
all persuasions in one family, under one com- 
mon religious light. Our common free school 
system does this, and therefore they oppose it. 
But in some cases the experiment of exor- 
cising the spirit of religion to accommodate 
the demands of Eomanism, has been made on 
the very plea of being able thus to induce the 
Eomanists to patronize the schools, and has 
utterly failed ; but other and disastrous conse- 
quences have not failed. An Evening Free 



172 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 

School had been for some years established in 
Salem. On the plea that Eomanists would 
not attend if there were any religious influ- 
ence or instruction connected with the school, 
such influence was given up and excluded, 
^^ The school has been conducted in the same 
manner as. previously, excepting that all re- 
ligious exercises have been dispensed with, in 
order that the children of Eoman Catholic pa- 
rents might be free to attend. This change 
failed of producing the desired effect,^ our (Ro- 
man) Catholic brethren having provided in- 
struction for their own children. But, on 
other grounds, it was deemed very proper and 
advisable. Eeligious exercises are not under- 
stood by the class of youth attending such 
schools, and if not understood, they are com- 
monly turned to ridicule, and that is infinitely 
worse than their entire omission." 

And yet, the class of youth attending such 
schools, are stated to be '^poor neglected boys 
and girls, whose circumstances of poverty and 
work would not allow them to attend day 
schools." And of such persons it is asserted 
that religious exercises cannot be understood 1 



OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 173 

Two hundred and* sixteen boys, from thirteen 
to sixteen years of age ! and yet not able to 
understand religion ! and, therefore, the con- 
clusion is that religion miist not be taught ! 
Instead of arguing from their ignorance, desti- 
tution, and want of all instruction elsewhere, 
that compassion towards them so much the 
more requires a religious influence, and some 
religious instruction there, the argument is de- 
liberately offered, that they cannot understand 
religious exercises ! And perhaps, too, they 
cannot understand arithmetic ; but is that a 
reason for not teaching it ? Perhaps they do 
not even understand reading ; but is that suf- 
ficient reason for not teaching them their let- 
ters ? If they cannot understand religious 
exercises, so much the more reason for begin- 
ning, in some w^ay, to teach them. But this 
reasoning, and the disastrous result of turning 
religion out of school, all proceeds from the 
first false step of excluding religious exercises, 
in the vain hope of securing the patronage of 
Eomanists. This is likely to be the result of 
all such efforts. 

15* 



§a)i k mx €m\ma\\ MjalL 

The potent energy of God's Avord as an ele- 
ment of regeneration and transfiguration, botli 
for the intellectual and moral nature, as well 
as tlie certainty of the Divine blessing attend- 
ing its presence, and its constant power, must 
have been forgotten, if not denied, by those 
who would exclude it from a place in our sys- 
tem of Common School Education. As an 
element of quiet, but effectual government 
and order in the schools, it would be invalua- 
ble; where its influence is judiciously em- 
ployed, by a teacher whose heart Joves it, pun- 
ishment is but seldom needed. It is a forcible 
preventing, as well as reforming element, yet 
ever gentle, instructive, and persuasive. What 
an agency of power, kindness, and love, is 



THE WORD OF GOD. 175 

foregone, neglected, rejected, when tlie Bible 
is excluded from tlie system of instruction and 
discipline in school. And what a delightful 
and attractive variety, in both the form and 
material of thought, feeling, and imagination, 
in history, parable, poetry, argument and pre- 
cept, in the lessons prepared by the Great 
Teacher of mankind, and given to our race un- 
der the gracious perpetual sanction of our 
birth-right from heaven, with the assurance 
that the things that are revealed belong to us 
and to our children forever ! 

That from a child thou hast 'known the Holy 
Scriptures^ is the most marked and explicit rec- 
ord of an educational process, as sanctioned 
of God. Doubtless, it ought to be the process 
with every immortal being in a Christian ' 
State ; and it might be, with nearly every one, 
if the State performed its full responsibility. 
And when we think of that responsibility as 
extending, in the course of a few years, to the 
children of more than a hundred millions, who 
will at once, within the limits of another gen- 
eration, be the inhabitants of our country, and 
think of all those children, during the whole 



176 THE WORD OF GOD 

period of tteir education undertaken by the 
State, as deprived of the Word of God with 
all its hallowing and sanctifying influences, its 
wondrous winning and perpetual power of sa- 
cred training and restraint, we regard with 
amazement the heedlessness, not to say reck- 
lessness of consequences, with which any man 
can deliberately and earnestly propose and la- 
bor for the exclusion of that Divine agency 
from the whole circle of an education so vast 
and important. 

To think how great and beneficial an influ- 
ence is exerted during the period of one year, 
in a single district school, by the falling of the 
A¥ord of Grod, as the gentle dew fi:om Heaven, 
in the hushed stillness of the school, morning 
and evening, on so many opening and sus- 
ceptible minds and hearts ; and then to think 
of the possibility of making that the reverent 
habit of the schools of twenty millions ; and 
then to think of that influence carried forward 
from 3^ear to year, as uninterrupted as the ris- 
ing and setting of the sun, through a period of 
thirty years, when the children of a population 
of more tlian two hundred millions mav be 



IN OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 177 

thus gathered beneath the same Divine Hand, 
the same beneficent impression ! How impos- 
ing, how majestic, how delightful the sight of 
the children of a whole nation, every day si- 
lently listening, at the same hour^ to the words 
of their Father in Heaven, and uniting at the 
same hour in the petition. Our Father! To 
think that this might be, was in likelihood of 
being, and then to conceive the plan of thwart- 
ing this possibility, and to labor by argument 
and management for preventing it ! Does it 
seem possible that such an effort can co-exist 
with Christian principle ? Are the two com- 
patible ? 

In this connection, how strikingly and sol- 
emnl}'^ beautiful are the words of John Foster, 
in reference to the inestimable value of the 
union of religious truth with secular instruc- 
tion, and the security and happiness of the 
mind advancing forward to the responsibilities 
of life, and the command of thought and ac- 
tion, under such a discipline. He imagines a 
visitor gazing on the busy operations of such 
a school, and watching the multitude of youth- 
ful spirits. '^ They are thus treading in the 



178 THE WORD OF GOD 

precincts of an intellectual economy ; the 
economy of tlionglit and truth, in which they 
are to live forever; and never, to eternity, 
will they have to regret this period and part 
of their employments. The visitor will be de- 
lighted to think how many disciplined actions 
of the mind, how many just ideas, distinctly 
admitted, that were strangers at the beginning 
of the day's exercise, — and among these ideas, 
some to remind them of God and their highest 
interest, — ^there ^vill have been, by the time 
the busy and well-ordered company breaks up 
in the evening, and leaves silence within these 
walls. He will not, indeed, grow romantic in 
hope ; he knows too much of the nature to 
which these beings belong ; knows, therefore, 
that the desired results of this discipline will 
but partially follow^; but still rejoices to think 
that partial result, w^hich will most certainly 
follow, will be worth incomparably more than 
all it will have cost." 

*' The friends of these designs for a general 
and highly -improved education, may proceed 
further in this course of verifying to them- 
selves the grounds of their assurance of happy 
16 



m OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 179 

results. A number of ideas decidedly the 
most important tliat were ever formed in hu- 
man thought, or imparted from the Supreme 
Mind, will be so taught in these institutions, 
that it is absolutely certain they will be fixed 
irrevocably and forever in the minds of many 
of the pupils. It will be as impossible to 
erase these ideas from their memories, as to 
extinguish the stars. And in the case of 
many, perhaps the majority^ of these youthful 
beings, advancing into the temptations of life, 
these grand ideas, thus fixed deep in their 
souls, will distinctly present themselves to the 
judgment and conscience an incalculable num- 
ber of times. What a number, if the sum of 
all these reminiscences of these ideas, in all 
the minds now assembled in a numerous 
school, could be conjectured ! But if one in a 
hundred of these recollections, if one in a. 
thousand, shall have the efficacy that it ought 
to have, who can compute the amount of the 
good resulting from the tuition which shall 
have so enforced and fixed these ideas, that 
they shall be infallibly thus recollected ? And 
is it altogether out of reason to hope that the 



180 THE WORD OF GOD 

desired efficacy will, as often as once in a 
thousand times, attend the luminous rising 
again of a solemn idea to the vievf of the 
mind ? Is still less than this to be hoped for 
our unhappy nature, and that, too, while a be- 
neficent God has the superintendence of it?"^ 
But if this cannot be expected even under 
the best of means, what can be anticipated 
without them? What from a school where 
religion is disowned, and the Bible rejected ? 
Can the Divine blessing be upon that ? The 
same Divine bounty that has given the whole 
of revelation as belonging to us and to our 
children forever, has connected the assurance 
of a beneficent influence and power to accom- 
pany the teaching of God's Word, and that it 
never shall be separated from it. It is con- 
veyed in language like the following : — ''This 
is my covenant with them, saith the Lord ; 
my Spirit that is upon thee, and my words 
which I have put in thy mouth, shall not de- 
part out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth 
of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy 
seed's seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth 
and forever."f 

* Foster on Popular Ignorance, ch. 2. f Is. lix. 21. 



IN OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 181 

But tliose who argue for the banishment of 
the Bible from our schools, would take away 
this pledge and assurance of a blessing from 
heaven, and would leave the j^outhful race of 
immortal beings, defrauded of their inherit- 
ance, their birth-right, not indeed to the un- 
covenanted mercies of God, but to the power 
and providence of a sj^stem that permits no 
reference to his mercies, and no knowledge of 
them. These men won.ld shut up the youth- 
ful mind in its pursuit of knowledge, and its 
disciplinary development, within a narrower 
way, bounded by high blank walls, over which 
it is forbidden to look, even were that pos- 
sible ; beyond which, stretches an infinite reach 
of thought and knowledge^ a region of bright 
celestial light, none of which must be let in 
upon the secular-beaten lane, which alone the 
young scholar is commissioned to travel. No 
teacher must presumic to communicate an inti- 
mation to his ' pupils concerning that bright 
land, nor by any conveyance to let in that 
celestial radiance, lest sectarianism should rush 
in with it. 



IMPORTANCE OF THE BIBLE 



ITS INTERDICTION ODIOUS. 

It is ever to be remembered how large a 
proportion of the children attending our com- 
mon schools are girls, and the teachers, 
females ; and how peculiarly appropriate and 
essential for them, both for instruction and 
government, the lessons of the Sacred Scrip- 
tures. What agency is so powerful for train- 
ing the sensibilities, for refining the manners, 
for purifying the heart, for directing and estab- 
lishing the principles, the feelings, the senti- 
ments, the habits of thought, in that gentle, 
and yet elevated and impressive character, 
which we wish to see possessed by every 
woman, and especially every mother of our 

Republic ? Of all motives, those of religion 
16* 



IMPORTANCE OF THE BIBLE. 183 

are best adapted and most effectual in the dis- 
cipline and government of the schools; but 
especially are religious sanctions and instruc- 
tions important in female schools. The idea 
of educating the female mind of our coun- 
try, in the proposed exclusion of the Bible 
and of all religious instruction, is really an in- 
sult to the common convictions of humanity 
in a Christian State. 

Just think of the absurdity, the tyranny, of 
placing the children and their teacher under 
such a regimen, because of the fear of the 
charge of sectarianism, that the teacher shall 
not dare to comment even on the simplest, 
sweetest, most comprehensive sayings, invita- 
tions, parables, or actions, of the Saviour of 
the world ! Think of such an espionage and 
interdiction, that in a lesson, for example, from 
the Gospel of John, ^' I am the resurrection 
and the life, he that believeth in me, though 
he w^ere dead, yet shall he live ; and whoso- 
ever liveth and believeth in me, shall never 
die," the trembling ' teacher shall not dare so 
much as tell the listening girls the duty of 
trusting in such a Saviour, and loving him, 



184 IMPOKTANCE OF THE BIBLE 

and following Ms example, and resting on him 
unto life eternal ! Shall not dare impress the 
sweetest, most common, most essential prin- 
ciples of Christianity upon those tender hearts 
and awakening consciences, for their guidance, 
their character, their welfare, in this world 
and in that which is to come ! Think of 
classes and teachers under this fear, lest some 
inquisitorial commissioner should enter, and 
mark this process of celestial light as en- 
dangering the entrance of sectarianism, and 
therefore not to be permitted, out of respect 
to the conscientious rights of those who re- 
quire the exclusion of the Bible and of all re- 
ligious instruction. 

And yet, this jealousy, espionage, and 
trembling fear, is ineyitable the mxoment you 
admit that the simplest religious instruction is 
sectarian, and that the government have no 
right to give religious instruction to the chil- 
dren of the State. But such a rule and such 
an admission is directly contrary to the princi- 
ples laid down under sanction of the State 
itself in the foundation of our common school 
system; nay, contrary to the very definition 



IN THE FEMALE SCHOOLS. 185 

of edncation, as given, again and again, by 
our governors and legislative bodies. It is a 
monstrous wrong, an oppression and a fraud 
incalculable, to confound religion and secta- 
rianism, and to assert that because the latter 
is forbidden, and most justly forbidden, there- 
fore the former shall not be taught, for fear of 
opening the door for the latter. "What a tri- 
umph for the Tempter of mankind, if politi- 
cians, at the instigation of those who slander 
the Bible itself as sectarian, can be authorized 
to exclude religion from our schools, to banish 
all the lessons of Christianity from the knowl- 
edge and affection of the opening minds of 
those millions of our children who receive no 
education w^hatever but that which the State 
gives them ! 

The exclusion of the Bible and of all relig- 
ious bias w^ould be followed inevitably by a 
fear and jealousy of all religious teaching, and 
by-and-bye, when any allusion should be made 
bv the teacher to God, Christ, and relisrious 
motives and sanctions, there would be an in- 
stinctive repulsion, as if this were trenching 
on forbidden ground. The threat of banish- 



186 IMPORTANCE OF THE BIBLE 

ing the teachers, if they do not banish all re- 
ligious bias from their instruction, would be 
more and more frequent, and the common 
schools would come, by common law of prac- 
tice and exclusion, to be fearful inquisitorial 
domiciles of jealousy against Divine truth. 

Scarcely anything can be conceived more 
intolerably odious than such a tj^rannical in- 
terdiction operating on the mind and con- 
science of the teacher. And yet, this is the 
very result to which this extreme dread of 
sectarianism, and the exclusion of all posi- 
tive religious influence in consequence of that 
dread, would soon come, if not prevented ; and 
would no more dare to instruct a youthful 
pupil as to the character of the Saviour and 
the duty of faith in him, than u.nder the Aus- 
trian despotism a teacher would dare instruct 
his pupils in the nature of civil and religious 
liberty, and the rights of man. There, every- 
thing is free to be taught hut freedom; and 
here, it is proposed that everything shall be 
free to be taught hut the Bihle and religion ; the 
moment you trench upon the province of re- 
ligious truth, some political informer shall de- 



IN THE FEMALE SCHOOLS. 187 

nonnce you as a teacher of sectarianism in the 
public schools. On that subject of religion 
you must keep you mouth shut ; not one word 
of instruction must you drop, or the inquisitor 
shall be upon you. You shall not be permitted 
even to explain a passage of Scripture. If the 
Bible is read at all in school, or used as a class- 
book, not a comment must be made upon its 
instructions, lest you open the door to the 
horrid monster of sectarianism. 

Now, this is anything but compatible with 
^free school system. Yet this very throttling 
and suffocation of all religious inquiry and 
communication is contended for, on the plea 
that if religion is introduced at all, it opens 
the door for sectarianism, and none can tell 
where it would stop. By the very same argu- 
ment, liberty must be choaked and silenced ; 
for any discussion of the principles of ihoi^ 
opens the door to anarchy and rebellion ; and 
so the freedom of the press must be stopped, 
for otherwise it runs into libels and licentious- 
ness. But the answer in all these cases is 
just this : that when the offence comes, then 
it is time enough to stop it, and that you have 



188 IMPORTANCE OF THE BIBLE 

no right to prevent liberty itself for the piir- 
pose of preventing the abuse of liberty. Let 
the press go free, and when any man abuses 
^ that freedom, bring him np for it, to trial and 
punishm^ent. And just so, let religion go free 
in the schools, and wait till some sectarian 
abuses the privilege, and stop the abuse, but 
not the privilege. Do not put a ban before 
hand upon religion and religious instruction, 
under pretence of preventing sectarianism. 
For religious instruction is one thing, and a 
thing entirely proper and necessary for the 
schools ; but sectarianism is another thing, 
and entirely improper. And it is not true that 
you cannot have religious influence and in- 
struction without sectarianism. Will any one 
dare to call our Saviour's parables sectarian? 
Yet under the rule of exclusion contended for, 
no teacher in the schools might dare explain 
the least of those parables, not even so much 
as to tell an energetic child what is the mean- 
ing of the pearl of great price. If anything 
of that kind comes up, some are ready to say, 
let the child be referred to its parents or its 
pastor. But suppose it has neither parents 



IN THE FEMALE SCHOOLS. 189 

nor pastor ; or suppose that the pastor is a 
priest, who hates the Bible, and the parents 
keep a grog shop. Where, in that case, shall 
the child be referred to, for a knowledge of 
the pearl of great price ? 

One object of a good education is to make 
the children inquisitive, and the teachers who 
know their business, will always encourage the 
asking of questions, and the utmost kindness 
and freedom in answering them. What is a 
school worth, that represses all this freedom 
instead of stimulating it ? But shall there be 
this freedom only on secular, and never on re- 
ligious things? Suppose you have a class 
reading in the New Testament. That sweet 
and blessed passage happens to be in the read- 
ing lesson, Come unto me, all ye that labor 
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 
Have you got to stop all your faculties of sug- 
gestion, of inquiry, of instruction there, and 
put a hermetical seal on the minds and lips of 
your pupils, because it is a religiorus lesson, 
and on that there must be no comment ? If 
not, how will you get along ? Suppose that 
you ask, (as a good teacher will certainly en- 



190 IMPORTAXCE OF THE BIBLE 

courage the art and habit of questioning,) Has 
any one any questions on the lesson? and 
suppose that one bright little boy inquires if 
that verse means the young as well as the old, 
or who it is that he must come to, or how he 
must come ? Oh, you say, hush, my boy, 
there must be nothing of religious instruction 
here ; but you may ask your father and moth- 
er when you go home. Father and mother ! 
What if the child comes from the Five Points ? 
And why not also send him to father and 
mother for the solution of his knots and difl&- 
culties in questions of grammar and arith- 
metic ? Perhaps in nine cases out of ten, he 
might be more likely to obtain that knowledge 
at home, than he would to gain any salutary 
instructions or ideas on the subject of religion. 
The foundation of Normal schools, or insti- 
tutions of education for teachers, to prepare 
them for their work, is referred by Lord 
Brougham to Fellenberg, the philosopher of 
Hofwyl, of whom he thus speaks: — ^' This 
happy idea originated with my old and vener- 
able friend, Emanuel Fellenberg, a name not 
more known than honored, nor more honored 



IN THE FEMALE SCHOOLS. 191 

than his virtuous and enlightened efforts in 
the cause of education and for the happiness 
of mankind, deserve." 

And now let us mark Fellenberg's own ex- 
pression of his feelings to the lamented Presi- 
dent Fisk, speaking on the exclusion of the 
Bible and religion from a common school sys- 
tem of education. He had received a some- 
what exaggerated account of the matter in 
America, and Dr. Fisk gives the conversation 
as follows: — ''Mr. Fellenberg expressed his 
verj great surprise at the neglect of religious 
instruction in our schools in America ; that 
the Bible was excluded as a regular text-book ; 
in short, that in the United States, among a 
religious, a Protestant, an enlightened, a free 
people, man should be educated so much in 
view of his physical wants, and his temporal 
existence, while the moral feelijigs of the heart, 
and our religious relations to God and eter- 
nity, should be left so much out of our schools. 
But, he said, the great principles of our religion 
would come into collision with no man's views 
who believed in Christianity ; and that, at any 
rate, party views were nothing in comparison 



192 IMPORTANCE OF THE BIBLE. 

■with the importance of religious training ; and 
therefore eveiy good man onglit to be willing 
to make some sacrifices of party views for tlie 
great benefits of an early religious education." 

Nothing could be more just and appropri- 
ate than these sentiments. They may be con- 
joined vnth Professor Stowe's remarks on the 
moral training in the common schools of 
Prussia, from his Eeport on the course of edu- 
cation in those schools. 

^'Another striking feature of the system," 
sa3^s he, '4s its moral and religious character. 
Its morality is pure and elevated, its religion 
entirely removed from the narrowness of sec- 
tarian bigotry. What parent is there, loving 
his children, and washing to have them re- 
spected and happy, who would not desire that 
they should be educated under such a moral 
and religious influence? Whether a believer 
in revelation or not, does he not know that 
without sound morals there can be no happi- 
ness, and that there is no morality like the 
morality of the ISTew" Testament? Does he 
not know that, without rehgion, the human 
heart can never be at rest, and that there is no 



IN THE FEMALE SCHOOLS. 193 

religion like the religioD of the Bible ? Every 
well-informed man knows that, as a general 
fact, it is impossible to impress the obligations 
of morality with any efficiency on the heart 
of a child, or even on that of an adult, with- 
out an appeal to some code, vv^hich is sustained 
by the authority of God ; and for what code 
will it be possible to claim this authority, if 
not for the code of the Bible ?" 

Professor Stowe's able Eeport should be 
studied by those Vv^ho imagine that religious 
instruction must of necessity be sectarian, 
Fevv^ things can be more instructive and im- 
pressive than his account of the manner in 
which religious and moral instruction is com- 
municated in select Bible narratives, in friend- 
ly and familiar conversation bet^veen the teach- 
er and the class. At a somewhat more ad- 
vanced age, the whole of the historical part 
of the Bible is studied thoroughly and sys- 
tematically, without the least sectarian bias, 
and without a moment being spent on a single 
idea that will not be of the highest use to the 
scholar during all his future life. 

17 



NECESSITY OF A 

FOR A 

LIVING AND PEOGIIESSIVE CIVILIZATION. 

It was a very profound remark of tlie great 
German Poet and Historian, Schiller, that ^4t 
is not enough that all intellectual improve- 
ment deserves our regard only so far as it 
flows back upon the character ; it must in a 
manner proceed from the character ; since the 
way to the head must he opened through the heart/^ 

The world, therefore, is wholly wrong in 
this matter of education, when it administers 
its own medicaments only, its own elements, 
its own food, and nothing higher, its own 
knowledge without the celestial life of knowl- 
edge. Power it gives, without guidance, with- 
out principles. It is just as if the art of ship- 
building should be conducted without helms, 



A COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION. 195 

and all sliips set afloat to be guided by tbe 
winds only. For sucli are the immortal sliips 
on tbe sea of human life without the Bible ; 
its knowledge, its principles, ought from the 
first to be as much a part of the educated, in- 
telligent constitution, as the keel or rudder is 
part and parcel of a well-built ship. Eeligious 
instruction, therefore, and the breath of the 
sacred Scriptures, ought to be breathed into 
the child's daily life of knowledge, and not 
put off to the Sabbath, when your children 
are addressed from the pulpit, or a small por- 
tion of the young are gathered into Sabbath 
Schools. Above all the elements of knowl- 
edge, that of religion is for all. If in their 
daily schools, children were educated for eter- 
nity, as well as time, there would be more 
good citizens, a deeper piety in life, a more sa- 
cred order and heaven-like beauty in the re- 
public, a better understanding of law, a more 
patient obedience of it. If our education 
would be one that States can live by, and 
flourish, it must be ordered in the Scriptures. 

Eomanism, in its attacks against the Word 
of God, forms a rallying point for all the infi- 



196 A COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION. 

delity and atlieism of a country. "Whoever 
and whatever hates the hght of the Bible, will 
shout encouragement to the sect that dares 
make a crusade against it. All elements of 
darkness and of evil will come trooping to its 
assistance. The time for prayer and vigilance, 
therefore, against its advances, is now. By- 
and-bye, the genius of a protective piety that 
has slumbered, may awake when it is too late 
to avoid great disaster. 

Some errors are so subtle and dangerous in 
their nature, that if you do not take them in 
their infancy, but allow them to accumulate, 
you afterwards dare not approach them. You 
must have a Safety Lamp, or you cannot se- 
curely examine them. If you carry the open 
torch of Truth, they will explode, like the 
pestiferous mine-gas, and blow you up. If 
men do not take care, this will be the case 
with Eomanism in its inveterate and deadly 
antagonism against the Scriptures ; there will 
be such an accumulation of this despotic ele- 
ment, that loves the darkness and hates the 
light, that it will be as much as a man's life is 
worth, even to examine it ; it has been so in 



A COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION". 197 

otlier conntries, and some day, if we let it 
work successfully against tlie Bible in our 
schools, it will make an explosion that will 
shatter our whole system. 

Meanwhile, let us beware of the false confi- 
dence, that because in a past generation we 
have had the Bible at the foundation, we can 
now afford to dispense with it. Let us beware 
of the delusion that a civilization which began 
in Christianity_, can be progressive without 
Christianity, or that a freedom, which was the 
gift of heaven and heavenly truth, can be per- 
manent, separated /rom heaven. 

" When in the seventeenth century," says 
the Chevalier Bunsen, '^ Europe emerged out 
of the blood and destruction into which the 
Pope and the Eomish or Eomanizing dynas- 
ties had plunged it, the world, which had seen 
its double hope blighted, was almost in de- 
spair both of religious and of civil liberty. 
The eighteenth century, not satisfied with the 
conventional theodicea of that genius of com- 
promise, Leibnitz, found no universal organ 
for the philosophy of history, except the 
French Encyclopedic School ; and this school 



198 A COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION. 

had no regenerating and reconstructive idea, 
save that of perfectibility and progress. But 
what is humanity without Grod? What is 
natural religion? What is progress without 
its goal ? These philosophers were not with- 
out belief in the sublime mission of mankind, 
but they wanted ethical earnestness as much as 
real learning and depth of thought. They 
pointed to civilization as to the goal of the 
race which mankind had to run. But civil- 
ization is an empty word, and may be, as 
China and Byzantium show, a caput mortuum 
of real life, a mummy dressed up in the sem- 
blance of living reality."* 

* Hyppolitus and his Age. Yol. 2, p. 8. 



U^ummt fxm tlit iist0rpf €mmm ^t\aoU 



The whole history of the system of com- 
mon schools in onr country is the history of 
the efforts of men who desired to place the 
Bible and religious truth in them, and as 
the foundation of them. Our towns were little 
republics with the Bible for their foundation. 
Our schools were little republics also, with the 
Bible there. The idea of divorcing the Bible 
from common schools, and common schools 
from the Bible and its religious instructions, 
would have been repugnant to the whole feel- 
ing, conviction, and determination of their 
founders. It would have been the wreck of 
any system of education, to propose that the 
Scriptures, and all religious bias, should be 



200 THE COMMON SCHOOLS 

excluded from tliem ; and it will be so still ; 
the country will not bear it. More and more 
tlie affections of tlie people will be alienated 
from the common schools, if we take the Bible 
out from them. Eespectable, and religious, 
and well-informed parents, will cease to send 
their children to them ; and they will become 
the resort only of the careless, the reckless, 
the utterly poor and destitute, and of those 
who never at home receive the light of divine 
truth or enjoy the fostering and restraining 
influence of a religious education. And when 
there comes to be such a division, as come 
there must, if the Bible and religion be ex- 
cluded from the schools^ then will our com- 
mon schools go down ; the most lavish mu- 
nificence on the part of the State could not 
keep them up ; the most patronising, or even 
compulsory legislation would be in vain to 
support them. They depend upon the affec- 
tion and respect of the moral, the religious, 
and the better instructed part of the commun- 
ity ; and when that ceases, the schools must 
go into contempt. The conscience of the 
church in this country cannot long be blinded 



OF KEW YORK. 201 

or stupefied on this subject ; it y/ill awake ; 
but it may awake when it is too late to re- 
stare to the Word of God the place which it 
rightfully claims ; and then, conscience itself 
would destroy the school system. 

It claims that place, not only rightfully, and 
from its very authority as the Word of God, 
but also historically, by long-established law 
and custom. And we are now to show, by 
historical survey, and appeals to the Statute 
Book; as well as to the habit and usage of the 
States and towns foremost in the work of edu- 
cation, that the plan of excluding the Bible, 
and all positive religious instruction and influ- 
ence, is a new and modern scheme concocted for 
a particular political emergency or purpose ; 
an innovation^ contrary in every case to the 
views and principles of the founders of the 
school system, the convictions of the wisest 
men in our country, the custom of our towns 
and villages, and the explicit provisions of 
our school laws. 

The History of the Common School system 
of the State of New York, is full of instruc- 
tion and warning. It begins with the first 



202 THE COMMON SCHOOLS 

meeting of the State Legislature, after the 
adoption of the Constitution, when the Gov- 
ernor, George Chnton, introduced the great 
subject in his speech, as follows : 

^^ Neglect of the education of youth, is one 
of the evils consequent upon war. Perhaps 
there is scarce anything more worthy your at- 
tention, than the revival and encouragement 
of seminaries of learning; and nothing by 
which we can more satisfactorily express our 
gratitude to the Supreme Being for his past 
favors, since piety and virtue are generally 
the offspring of an enlightened understand- 
ing." , 

From 1795 to 1802, various measures were 
adopted, and revenues appropriated for this 
object. In 1802 and 1808, Gov. Clinton re- 
newedly and energetically recommended the 
establishment of Common Schools, putting 
morals and religion as their foremost objects. 
*' The advantage to morals, religion, liberty, 
and good government, arising from the general 
diffusion of knowledge, being universally ad- 
mitted, permit me to recommend this subject 
to your deliberate attention." 



OF NEW YORK. 203 

In 1804, Governor Lewis remarked, with 
reference to the subject of education, and the 
establishment of Common Schools, as follows : 
^^ In a government resting on public opinion, 
and deriving its chief support from the affec- 
tions of the people, religion and morality 
cannot be too sedulously inculcated. Com- 
mon Schools, under the guidance of respect- 
able teachers, should be established in every 
village, and the indigent be educated at the 
public expense," 

In 1810, Grovernor Tompkins called the at- 
tention of the Legislature to the subject, in the 
following language : ^' I cannot omit this oc- 
casion of inviting your attention to the means 
of instruction for the rising generation. To 
enable them to perceive and duly estimate 

their rights, TO INCULCATE CORRECT PRINCI- 
PLES, AND HABITS OF MORALITY AND RELIGION, 

and to render them useful citizens, a compe- 
tent provision for their education is all essen- 
tial." 

In 1811, Governor Tompkins again called 
the attention of the Legislature to this subject, 
and a law was passed for appointing five Com- 



204 THE COMMON SCHOOLS OF NEW YOKE. 

missioners, to report a system for tlie organi- 
zation and establishnient of Common Scliools. 
The Commissioners were men well fitted for 
this trust, and proved faithful to it. Their 
masterly document is quoted at large in the 
official history of the Common School system, 
with these remarks : " We cannot deem any 
apology necessar}^ for the space occupied by 
these extracts from this admirable report; 
shadowing forth as it does the great features 
of that system of pubhc instruction subse- 
quently adopted, and successfully carried into 
execution ; and laying down, in language at 
once eloquent and impressive, those funda- 
mental principles, upon which alone, any sys- 
tem of popular education, in a republic like 
ours, must be based." 



sf tilt Sptem bg tilt M^tt. 

Let tis then see what, in the view of the 
founders of our system, were some of those 
fundamental principles. 

'^Perhaps," say they, ^Hhere never will be 
presented to the Legislature a subject of more 
importance than the establishment of Common 
Schools. Education, as the means of improv- 
ing the moral and intellectual faculties, is, 
under all circumstances, a subject of the most 
imposing consideration. To rescue man from 
that State of degradation to which he is doom- 
ed, unless redeemed by education ; to unfold 
his physical, intellectual, and moral powers ; 
and to fit him for those high destinies which 
his Creator has prepared for him, cannot fail 
to excite the most ardent sensibility of the 
philosopher and the philanthropist." 
18 



206 THE FOUNDATION OF 

" The people must possess both intelligence 
and virtue; intelligence to perceive what is 
right, and virtue to do what is right. Our re- 
public, therefore, maj^ justly be said to be 
founded on the inteUigence and virtue of the 
people. For this reason, it is with much pro- 
priety that Montesquieu has said, In a repub- 
lic, the whole force of education is required." 

*^ The Commissioners think it necessary to 
present in the strongest point of view, the im- 
portance and absolute necessity of education, 
either as connected with the cause of religion 
and morality, or with the prosperity and ex- 
istence of our political institutions. The ex- 
pedient devised by the Legislature is the es- 
tablishment of Common Schools ; which being 
spread throughout the State, and aided by its 
bounty, will bring improvement within the 
reach and power of the humblest citizen. This 
appears to be the best plan that can be devised 
to disseminate religion, morality, and 
LEARNING throughout a whole country." 

It is clear that in the view of these gentle- 
men, and of the legislature under whom they 
acted, religion as well as knowledge was a 



THE SYSTEM BY THE STATE. 207 

legitimate subject of teaching and dissemination 
by the government through the public schools. 
They did not deem the introduction of relig- 
ious principles an intrusion on the rights of 
any conscience. 

But still further, speaking of the course of 
instruction appropriate and essential in com- 
mon schools, under direction and patronage 
of the State, the commissioners say, ^'In these 
schools should be taught at least those branches 
of education which are indispensably necessary 
to every person in his intercourse with the 
world, and to the performance of his duty as 
a useful citizen. Eeading, writing, arithmetic, 
and the principles of morality, are essential to 
every person, however humble his situation in 
life. Without the first, it is impossible to 
receive those lessons of morality which are 
inculcated in the writings of the learned and 
pious ; nor is it possible to become acquainted 
with our political constitutions and laws ; nor 
to decide those great political questions which 
ultimately are referred to the intelligence of 
the people. Writing and arithmetic are indis* 
pensable in the management of one's private 



208 THE FOUITDATION OF 

affairs, and to facilitate one's commerce witli 
the world. Morality and religion are tlie foun- 
dation of all that is truly great and good, and 
are consequently of primary importance." 
The writers of this report might be supposed 
to have come to their task fresh from the 
perusal of Washington's Farewell Address. 

In regard to school-masters, they say, 
" When we consider the tender age at which 
children are sent to school; the length of 
time the}^ pass under the direction of their 
teachers; when we consider that their little 
minds are to be diverted from their natural 
propensities to the artificial acquisition of 
knowledge ; that they are to be prepared for 
the reception of great moral and religious 
truths, to be inspired with a love of virtue 
and detestation of vice ; we shall forcibly per- 
ceive the absolute necessity of suitable qualifi- 
cations on the part of the master." 

Further still, on the subject of proper books, 
the commissioners declare, that ''much good 
is to be derived from a judicious selection of 
books, calculated to enlighten the understand- 
ing not only, but to improve the heart. And 



THE SYSTEM BY THE STATE. 209 

as it is of incalculable consequence to guard 
the young and tender mind from receiving 
fallacious impressions, tlie commissioners can- 
not omit mentioning this subject as a part of 
the weiglitj trust reposed in them. Connected 
with the introduction of suitable books, the 
commissioners take the liberty of suggesting 
that some observations and advice touching 
the reading of the Bible in the schools might 
be salutary. In order to render the sacred 
volume productive of the greatest advantage, 
it should be held in a very different light from 
that of a common school book. It should be 
regarded as a book intended for literary im- 
provement not merely, but as inculcating 
great and indispensable moral truths also. 
With these impressions, the comxmissioners are 
induced to recommend the practice introduced 
into the ISTew York Free School, of having 
select chapters read at the opening of the 
school in the morning, and the like at the 
close in the afternoon. This is deemed the 
best mode of preserving the religious regard 
which is due to the sacred writings." 

What could be better than these principles, 
18^- 



210 THE FOUISTDATION OF 

accepted and sanctioned by the State as the 
foundation of a noble system of Free Common 
School Education ? In closing their remarks, 
the commissioners affirmed that they '^ could 
not conclude their report mthout expressing 
once more their deep sense of the momentous 
subject committed to them. If we regard it 
as connected with the cause of religion and 
morality merely, its aspect is awfully solemn. 
But the other views of it already alluded to 
are sufficient to excite the keenest solicitude in 
the legislative body. It is a subject, let it be 
repeated, intimately connected with the per- 
manent prosperity of our political institutions. 
The American empire is founded on the virtue 
and intelligence of the people. . . . And 
the commissioners cannot but hope that that 
Being who rules the universe in justice and in 
mercy, who rewards virtue and punishes vice, 
will most graciously deign to smile benignly 
on the humble efforts of a people in a cause 
purely his own, and that he will manifest this 
pleasure in the lasting prosperity of our 
country." 

If the names of those commissioners under 



THE SYSTEM BY THif STATE. 211 

whose direction the Croton Eeservoir was 
built, to supply this city with pure water, de- 
served to be engraved in the massive work, 
much more do the names of these commission- 
ers, at the foundation of our system of Common 
Free School Education, with the Bible as its 
corner stone, deserve a grateful and lasting 
remembrance. They were Jedediah Peck, 
John Murray, Jr., Samuel Eussell, Eoger 
Skinner, and Samuel Macomb. The leading 
features of the system by them proposed were 
adopted and passed into a law by the legisla- 
ture in 1812. 

From that time for many years, up to the 
administration of Grovernor De Witt Clinton, 
the system went on improving, and becoming 
more and more established in the affections of 
the people. Grovernor Clinton, in his first 
message or speech at the opening of the session 
of 1822, dwelt upon the condition of public 
instruction, and remarked that *'the first duty 
of a State is to render its citizens virtuous, by 
intellectual instruction and moral discipline, 
by enlightening their minds, purifying their 
hearts, and teaching them their rights and 



212 THE FOUNDATION OF 

their obligations." Governor Clinton repeat- 
edly wrote upon this subject, and insisted on 
the duty of elevating the standard of education, 
mental and moral. He suggested the system 
of monitorial schools, and we believe also, 
schools for the training of teachers. 

In 1830, Mr. Flagg, the State Superintend- 
ent, observed: ^'The immense importance of 
elevating the standard of education in the 
common schools is strongly enforced by the 
fact, that to every ten persons receiving in- 
struction in the higher schools, there are at 
least five hundred dependent upon the com- 
mon schools for their edu.cation." And it may " 
be added, how powerful an argument is this 
for the necessity of having the Bible and re- 
ligious instruction in these schools, and the 
absurdity, or rather impossibilitj^, of referring 
the children to other schools or places of in- 
struction for the Word of God, if not ten chil- 
dren in a hundred were likely ever to obtain 
such advantages. 

In 1838, the Superintendent for the first 
time began to confound the question of relig- 
ious instruction with that of sectarianism. 



THE SYSTEM BY THE STATE. 213 

From Wastington downwards,, men of all 
classes liad acknowledged tlie necessity of re- 
ligion as well as moralitj^ and knowledge, nor 
had there ever been any jealousy against in- 
struction on the subject of religion as sectarian. 
But the element of Eomanism was now begin- 
ning to make itself felt. Yet still the Bible 
was recommended as a class-book, and the Su- 
perintendent justly remarked that '^ there can 
be no ground to apprehend that the schools 
will be used for the purpose of favoring any 
particular sect or tenet, if these sacred writ- 
ings, which are their own safest interpreters, 
are read without any other comment, than 
such as may be necessary to explain and en- 
force by familiar illustration, the lessons of 
duty which they teach." 

In 1840, the Superintendent, John C. Spen- 
cer, remarked, that ^' no plan of education can 
now be considered complete, which does not 
embrace a full development of the intellectual 
faculties, a systematic and careful discipline 
of the moral feelings, and a preparation of the 
pupil for the social and political relations 
which he is destined to sustain in manhood. 



214 THE FOUNDATIOK OF THE SYSTEM, 

It must be conceded that the standard of 
common school education in this State falls 
far short of the attainment of these ob- 
jects." 

Now, it is obvious that a systematic and 
careful discipline of the moral feelings is not 
possible, without a religious training of the 
conscience, and the guidance of the Word of 
God. If this were excluded from a common 
school education, it wou.ld be found miserably 
lame and defective. In the ^' social and polit- 
ical relations," indeed, in every way, the most 
direct and certain mode of making good 
citizens is to educate them under the power of 
religious truth. It is by celestial observations 
only, Mr. Coleridge once beautifully remarked, 
that terrestrial charts can be constructed. You 
are sure to make the young man a good 
citizen if you make him a virtuous man ; you 
are not sure to make him a good citizen, if 
you merely instruct him in secular knowledge. 



l^giumng 0f i\t Mm against tk ^tx^km. 

Soon after this period a severe conflict was 
waged between those who maintained the 
natural and legal right and moral necessity of 
the Scriptures in the schools, and those who 
endeavored, at the instigation of the Eoman 
Catholic party, to exclude them. During the 
superintendence of the lamented Col. Stone, 
and of his successor. Dr. Eeese, these gentle- 
men labored to restore the Bible to its just 
place and authority, and exposed themselves 
to much political abuse and obloquy for so 
doing. 

Previous to the administration of Col. Stone, 
laws were passed in 1842 and 1843, contain- 
ing the section forbidding sectarian teaching 
and books. Under cover of these laws, the 



216 BEGINKINa OF THE WAR 

effort was driven on to banish the Bible, as 
being itself a sectarian book, no statute hav- 
ing then been passed to prevent its banishment, 
because it had never been dreamed that the 
time Tvonld come when such a statute would 
be necessary ; the Scriptures having been read 
daily in all the public schools for forty years, 
without complaint or opposition. 

Col. Stone " advised, counselled, recom- 
mended, and remonstrated, terminating his 
official labors by invoking the interposition of 
the Legislature," to protect and preserve the 
schools from having the Bible turned out of 
them. It was in answer to his eloquent ap- 
peals that an amendment to the School Law 
was enacted in 1844, prohihiting the Board of 
Education from excluding the Holy Scriptures 
from any school. Notwithstanding this, the 
ward officers of different schools still main- 
tained the exclusion, and forbade the teachers 
the privilege of using the Bible. "Many of 
the teachers," the Superintendent declared, 
*' were thus intimidated, from an apprehension 
least they should lose their places, wdiich in- 
deed w^as intimated in some cases, and dis- 



AGAINST THE SCEIPTURES. 217 

tinctly threatened in others. Valuable teach- 
ers, in several cases, for reading the Bible in 
their schools, have been actually either dis- 
missed or compelled to resign." As an illus- 
tration of the influences and the men by whom 
the exclusion of the Bible was accomplished, 
a written order was produced by the teacher 
of a school, in one of the wards where the 
Bible was prohibited, which order was served 
upon him by the trustees of the school, in the 
words and manner following : — 

^^ Sir By a unanimos vote of the trustees 
Last Meeting all Secterian Books is Bequisted 
to Bee Eemoved from the School as it is 
thaught the Bihl one it is Requisted to Bee Ee- 
moved." 

The Superintendent justly remarked, that 
*'the orthography, capitals, and want of 
punctuation, as well as the beauties of the 
sentence, exhibited the lofty qualifications of 
such trustees of common schools to control 
the interests of popular education." But if 
the sacred cause and system of a common 
school education be thrown into the hands of 
politicians, to be arranged with reference to 
19 



218 BEGINNING OF THE WAR 

votes, to please this or that political party, 
nothing better can be expected. The history 
of that period shows the danger and disaster 
inevitable npon such a course ; but the efforts 
of the Eoman Catholics to expel the Bible, 
divide the schools, and distribute the school 
funds, signally failed, through the merciful 
overruling providence of God."^ 



* A controversy, growing out of the same question, ran 
on in the public journals between Bishop Hughes and 
Mr. Hale, the well-known independent Editor of the 
Journal of Commerce. On Mr. Hale*s part, the contro- 
versy embodied facts, appeals and arguments, of such 
energy and power for the people, that we cannot but 
present one passage, of great pith and point, directly con- 
nected with our subject: 

"The effort of your priests and yourselves, gentlemen," 
said Mr. Hale, "to get possession of the money appro- 
priated by the State of New York for the support of the 
Common Schools, has a singular appearance. Bishop 
Hughes says, * We come here^ denied of our rights.^ Pray, 
what are the rights here, of a priest who holds his com- 
mission and his place by the will of a foreign hierarch, 
and upon condition of continued obedience. Such a man 
cannot, in the nature of the case, become an American. 
He may swear allegiance, and kiss the Bible and the 
cross ever so many times — he is a foreigner still. He 
may have the 'privilege of staying here, and being pro- 
tected by our laws ; but as to rights for intermeddling 
with American affairs, he has none. The amount which 
Catholics pay towards the school-money is exceedingly 



AGAINST THE SCRIPTURES. 219 

small, and all your contributions to the State, in every 
way, are greatly overbalanced by the donations made 
back to you by our various public institutions. You are 
almost all foreigners by birth here, in your first genera- 
tion; you profess a religion subordinated to a foreign 
head — a religion against which our ancestors entered 
their solemn protest — a protest which their sons mean to 
sustain ^yhile they live, and hand down from generation 
to generation while the country endures. Your priests 
come here on a *' mission" as they profess, and here, with 
some men of intelligence and vv^orth, and an army who 
can neither read nor write, headed by these priests, you 
clamor for your rights. With the enjoyment of all the 
privileges of American institution, of liberty, religion and 
science, bestowed on your landing in our country, you 
are still discontented. Pray, by what rule should your 
rights be determined ? Shall it be by the measure which 
would be meted out under a reverse of circumstances to 
a like company of American Protestants in a Catholic 
country ? You claim the right especially to interfere 
with the management of our public schools. Pray, had 
you any such right in the country of your birth, where 
your religion adjusted rights, and dealt them out? Be- 
fore Americans entrust you with the management of their 
public schools, they would like to see the result of your 
labors in the same way in Catholic countries. Can you 
point us to some spot in Italy, Spain, Austria, or any other 
country under the influence of the Catholic Church, 
where the earliest care of Popery is to establish common 
schools, in which all the children shall be taught to read, 
and write, and cipher ? We should like to visit that Ca- 
tholic country, where, in every neighborhood, the district 
school-house is the centre of interest, and to see the Ca- 
tholic children as in neat attire they assemble blithely 
every morning. Is there any such spot in all the domin- 
ions of the Pope ? No ; coitimon schools are the offspring 



220 BEGINNING OF THE WAR 

of Protestantism. We can have tliem, because we are 
not under the dominion of the Pope. His letter proves 
conclusively that Romanism is the enemy of Common 
Schools, and popular education in every form, Americans 
will not, if they are wise, put an institution which they 
love so much into the hands of its enemies. The glory of 
our system is universal education ; the glory of yours is 
universal ignorance. The meridian of Catholic^ ascend- 
ency was the midnight of our world's history. While 
our children are taught the elements of all sorts of useful 
knowledge, and each with a Bible in his hand, is instruct- 
ed to read, and think, and act independently, our institu- 
tions will be safe ; but such a system will lay Popery in 
the dust, wherever it prevails. The common people, in 
all Catholic countries, are ignorant of the rudiments of 
education. Those who come here can, in general, sign 
their names only v/itli a mark. The persons who can 
neither read nor write, whose numbers disfigure the 
census returns of our towns, are most of them Catholics. 
Under all these circumstances, gentlemen, your claim 
that a part of our Public School money should be put 
into the hands of Catholic priests to manage, strikes us as 
exhibiting a wonderful degree of assurance. 

Your demand upon us for proof, has driven us to a more 
thorou»gh inquiry into your doctrines and practices than 
we had ever made before. We have been much instructed 
by the labor. We believe the assertions which we made, 
with a wider and deeper feeling of disapprobation now, 
than when we made them. We find in the system a more 
daring impiety towards God, and a more confident trust 
in the credulity of men, and less of even speciousness of 
scriptural support, than we had supposed. The examina- 
tion has made us feel more thankful to the great men who 
dared to face your system in its strength, and more thank- 
ful to God that he gave success to their efforts, so that the 
chains of Popery were broken, and a spirit of freedom let 



AGAINST THE SCRIPTURES. 221 

loose which has blessed our land, and will bless all the 
nations. 

Your whole system is anti-American. The powers of your 
ecclesiastical officers are derived from a foreign prince, and 
dependent on him. Everything concentrates in him as the 
head of your system. By authority received from him it 
is that Bishop Dubois shuts up one American church, and 
maintains a man, publicly charged by numerous affidavits 
with being often intoxicated, as the priest of another, in 
defiance of the will of the people. There is no American- 
ism in this. You, gentlemen, while you own the supremaTiy 
of the priests in such a matter, and humbly crouch to their 
power, are deficient in the first elements of Americans. 
To be an American, is not to live on American soil onl}^ 
but it is to be a freeman in politics and religion. It is to 
be free to read, to think, to act, and to control our own 
afi'airs. 

If, standing as you do, you suppose that by any means 
you can get possession of our public institutions, especially 
of our public schools, or any part of them, for the purpose 
of perverting them from their public, American character, 
to the sectarian subordination of Romanism, you are mis- 
taken. Do not infer more than is meant from the readi- 
ness with which you are admitted to all the benefits of our 
institutions. Americans have no reason to fear you, and 
no wish to embarrass you. They trust in Liberty as their 
shield. They believe that its principles are so thoroughly 
established and protected by a free press, and all the means 
of free discussion among the people, that despotism cannot 
be introduced, either in politics or religion, and made to 
flourish here. 

However enslaved the feelings of persons may be when 
they come from the despotisms of the old world, and al- 
though that slavery may be so inwrought that the sub- 
ject cannot at once be disenthralled when he treads our 
shore, they yet believe that our atmosphere of liberty 
19* 



222 BEGINNING OF THE WAR 

will revive the vitality of manliness within him, and that 
at least his children will be true Americans. We have 
never thought of subordinating the moral and intellectual 
machinery which works this renovation, to the control 
of new and uninstructed hands. Politicians may be sup- 
ple to you, and if you will offer yourselves for sale for the 
boon you demand, some of those politicians may be will- 
ing to sell their birth-right for your votes. But it is not 
so with the people. They understand something of the 
Anti-American character of your system, and they will 
displace any man who is found betraying the public in- 
terest to you. You and all other citizens are at liberty 
to construct schools as you please, for yourselves. But 
the public schools must remain public, subordinated to no 
religious sect, yet unobjectionable to all. They are not 
designed to teach religion, yet the Bible, the common 
book of all sects, they retain, and will retaia, as God pre- 
pared it for man's use, without note or comment of human 
addition. The Bible is the corner-stone of our whole fabric^ 
and that book in the vernacular tongue, in the hands of every- 
body, is the grand principle of Ainericanism. You must 
conform to this principle if you vjould be Americans. If you 
find the Bible a sectarian book, favorable to other sects, 
and dangerous to your's, the reason probably is, that your 
opinions are less in accordance with the Bible than theirs. 
Let us invite you therefore, gentlemen, to adopt the 
American plan of liberty : to discard the timorous fear of 
error, and trust to the mighty power of truth. Cast off, 
for yourselves, and your people, the slavery of priests and 
councils, and invite every man to go to the fountains of 
truth, and taste and judge for himself. Unite with us in 
maintaining our public schools and all our other public 
institutions on a public basis. If your system should be 
overthrown by the free energies of truth, you will have, 
as Americans, and as men, as much occasion to rejoice in 



AGAINST THE SCRIPTUKES. 223 

the triumph, as any of your fellow-citizens, If, on the 
same free plan, the Roman Catholic religion can supplant 
Protestantism, so be it, yr^ say, Let truth prevail. It is 
that alone which can sustain useful institutions in this 
world, and prepare us for the world of realities to which 
we hasten." 



BENEWAL OF THE WAR AGAINST THE SCRIPTURES. 

In* 1849, the act was passed establishiiig 
free schools througliout the State — our present 
free school system — determined by popular 
vote, the whole number of votes cast being 
249,872, and the majority in favor of the 
law, 157,921. On the question for the repeal 
of this system, there were cast 393,654 votes, 
184,398 for the repeal, and 209,346 against it; 
leaving a majority of 25,038 against repealing 
it. An annual tax of 800,000 dollars for the 
support of free schools, is provided for in this 
system, in addition to which there is a school 
fund of more than five million and four hun- 
dred thousand dollars, so that the whole an- 
nual amount applicable to the support of free 
schools is one million and one hundred thou- 



THE FREE SCHOOL SYSTEM. 225 

sand dollars. The responsibility devolving 
upon the State Superintendent at the head of 
this vast system is immense, and the report 
of Mr. Morgan in 1851, was an admirable de- 
velopment of the grand and comprehensive 
character, moral and intellectual, which this 
system should possess. The history of the 
system, prepared under his direction, remarks 
that '* there is no institution within the range 
of civilization, upon which so much for good 
or for evil depends, upon which hang so many 
and such important issues to the future Avell- 
being of individuals and communities, as the 
common district school. It is through that 
alembic that the lessons of the nursery and 
the family fire-side, the earliest instructions in 
pure morality, and the precepts and examples 
of the social circle are distilled ; and from it 
those lessons are destined to assume that tinge 
and hue v*^hich are permanently to be incor- 
porated into the character and the life." The 
grandest and best results from this school sys- 
tem it is declared can be anticipated, but only 
^^ by an infusion into its entire course of dis- 
cipline and instruction of that high moral cul- 



226 ESTABLISHMENT OF 

ture^ whicli alone can adequately realize the 
idea of sound education." '•'• The means of 
elementary instruction demand and will repay 
tlie consecration of the highest intellectual and 
moral energies, the most comprehensive benev- 
olence, and the best affections of ou.r common 
nature." 

From the preceding sketch of this system, 
taken from the public documents, it will be 
perceived that while the greatest care has been 
justly taken to exclude sectarianism, its found- 
ers and promoters were equally carefal and 
determined that the Bible and religion should 
not be excluded ; they intended and provided 
that moral and religious instruction should 
possess a fundamental place and influence. 
With such a purpose, they commended the 
enterprise to God, and to the religious convic' 
tions of the country. 

Accordingly, provision was early made by 
law, giving opportunity for the exercise of a 
religious influence by the teachers, yet not 
sectarian; and under Mr. Spencer's adminis- 
tration it was decided, and the enactment is 
part of the system, that ^' Teachers may open 



THE FREE SCHOOL SYSTEM. 227 

and close their scliools witli prayer, and the 
reading of the Scriptures, accompanied with 
suitable remarks, taking care to avoid all dis- 
cussion of controverted points, or sectarian 
dogmas."^ 

And yet, in the face of this decision, and of 
usage hitherto, it is now directly asserted that 
to give this permission to the teachers will be 
to trample upon conscience, and open the door 
ta sectarianism, and take away the rights of 
those who do not believe in the importance 
and efl&cacy of prayer! It is asserted that 
even though the reading of the Scriptures 
were permitted, yet, to say one word as to 
their meaning, to explain, illustrate, or enforce 
their lessons, is an intrusion on the universal 
conscience, and especially on the Eomish con- 
science, and ought not to be suffered. And 
by various influences and edicts, personal and 
oral, and contrary to the public enactments, 
the Bible itself has in some cases been ex- 
cluded, and the endeavor has been made, and 
in some instances successfully, to introduce a 

* RandaU's Common School System of the State of 
New York, p. 273. 



228 ESTABLISHMENT OF 

secret^ silent, inquisitorial common law against 
all prayer and religions instruction, and to 
produce tlie impression tliat anything border- 
ing on religious truth will endanger the popu- 
larity of the teachers and the schools, expose 
them to the charge of sectarianism, and be re- 
garded with suspicion and disfavor by the ap- 
pointed school authorities. In some cases the 
teachers have been publicly threatened that if 
they do not drop those practices, nay, if th«y 
even persist in using the Lord's prayer, they 
shall be turned out of their places. Such 
threats have been made to female teachers, 
even in the presence of the children, and no 
redress has been granted for the insult. 

Whence has sprung so rapid and alarming 
a change, in subversion or utter disregard and 
violation, of some of the best and earliest 
established fixtures of the public school sys- 
tem? Whence has arisen this restraint, this 
fear, this ban upon the Bible and religion, 
notwithstanding the known fact that the use 
of the Bible and religious instruction has been 
the wont of the schools from the beginning, 
and to exclude it now, on pretence of its being 



THE FREE SCHOOL SYSTEM. 229 

sectarian, •woukl be a departure from tlie pro- 
vision and recommendation of the fathers and 
framers of the school system, and from the 
custom and law hitherto ? 

It is impossible, and perhaps it would be 
useless, in this place, to go into a history of 
the introduction of the Eomish and pohtical 
element into the management of a system of 
public education, that ought to be so high and 
sacred above all sectarian and political in- 
trigue. We will not enter on the detail of the 
conflicts fought, the schemes presented, the 
influences used, the conferences of the school 
authorities with Bishop Hughes, the submis- 
sion to his inspection of all the school litera- 
ture for consideration, the disgraceful black- 
ening of the school books by Eomish expur- 
gation, and the partial and temporary giving 
up of the school system to the dictation of 
Eomish priests. We say partial and temporary ; 
for such things, we trust in God, cannot be 
repeated; but 3^et a most disastrous political 
taint and sectarian influence have been per- 
petuated ; and whereas the most explicit pro- 
visions are made in the school laws against 
20 



230 ESTABLISHMENT OF 

sectarianism, its very worst form and power 
has been admitted, sectarianism against the 
Word of God itself, and is now playing its 
game, in some cases encouraged by the very 
school authorities, who are bound by law to 
have resisted it. 

The prejudice against the Bible and religion, 
in our schools, on the part of Eomanism, has 
been taken up, and wrought into an argument, 
and presented and urged in many ways, even 
with labored ridicule of the use of the Scrip- 
tures, and even by the very officers of that 
school system, the excellence and success of 
which were declared, by its founders and our 
fathers, to be indissolubly connected with, and 
vitally dependent upon, the Bible and religious 
truth ! And the appeal to men's prejudices, 
and to their dread of ecclesiastical domination, 
has been artfully made, for the exclusion of 
the Bible and prayer, on the ground that any- 
thing positively religious in the schools would 
be '' the first step, and a decided one, towards 
placing them under ecclesiastical guardianship 
and supremacy." And yet this very appeal, 
with all the sophistry of the demagogue, is 



THE FREE SCHOOL SYSTEM. 231 

made at the instigation of a sect, and for tlie 
very purpose of having the conscientions 
EIGHT of all other sects to the Bible cut down, 
trampled on, destroyed, at the will of that one 
despotic sect demanding the exclusion of the 
Bible, and demanding it on the express 
grounds of their own ecclesiastical prejudices 
and canons! And the very first complaint 
against the Bible has come from that sect, and 
the very first occasion of the appearance of 
sectarianism in the schools, from their foun- 
dation, has been the intrusion of the sectarian- 
ism of that one sect against the Bible. The 
complaint has never even been made, from 
any quarter whatever, that sectarian tenets 
have been taught in any of the schools, but 
the complaint, the effort, and the enmity, are 
against the Bible and religion itself in the 
schools, and men are not found wanting to 
join with the sect of the Eomanists in the sec- 
tarian cry. 

Now, in point of fact, the perfect freedom 
of the Bible and its religious lessons, uni- 
versally, for all, without any distinction of 
sect whatever, in the schools, is the only com- 



232 ESTABLISHMENT OF 

plete security for them against ^'ecclesiastical 
guardianship and su.premacy." But tlie ex- 
clusion of the Bible, the imprisonment and 
excommimication of its lessons, ivould be the 
complete and absolute triumph and authority 
of that form of ecclesiastical guardianship and 
supremacy, which asserts its superiority to the 
Bible, and bases its power, its despotism, on 
the banishment of the Bible from the use and 
knowledge of the people. And yet, the 
President of the Board of Education of New 
York, no longer ago than last August, at a 
meeting of the American Educational Conven- 
tion, denounced the reading of the Bible, and 
all religious instruction, and eyen the use of 
the Lord's Prayer, as sectarian, oppressive, 
and even ridiculous and irrational. He has 
even asserted that '^ the State has no means 
of ascertaining the true religion." " The read- 
ing of the Bible in school," said he, " and the 
repeating of the Lord's Prayer, is ritualistic 
and not educational. It is not for improve- 
ment in secular learning nor in sacred learn- 
ing." He puts it on the same footing with the 
reading from the Eomish Missal, or the repe- 



THE FKEE SCHOOL SYSTEM. 233 

tition of the name of the Virgin Mary as t> e 
Holy Mother of God ; and he argues that if 
we would not be willing to have the latter in 
the schools, we have no more right to the 
former, no more right to repeat the Lord's 
Prayer than the Eomish Missal. The state- 
ment of such sentiments is enough ; they do 
not need to be refuted. What would Wash- 
ington have said to such assertions? They 
cannot but fill every sound and Christian 
mind Vvdth indignation. 

But we are compelled to ask, What does 
this gentleman mean ? Is he wholly ignorant 
of the history and provisions of the school 
system ? And when he avers that religious 
instruction in the schools would be ''the first 
step tOYv^ards placing them under ecclesiastical 
guardianship and supremacy," has he forgot- 
ten that the very founders and framers of the 
school system did themselves, and the legisla- 
ture at their suggestion, provide a place for 
such instruction, and for the Bible, in the 
schools, and so took that first step ? Is he 
ready to denounce such men as Governor 
Clinton, Governor Lewis, Governor Tomp- 
20'^ 



234 ESTABLISHMENT OF 

kins, and the illustrions Commissioners, whose 
Report stands sanctioned by law and public 
approbation, as religious sectarians^ and the 
authors of a system of '^sectarian propagand- 
ism" ? Would be the first step ! And jet, it 
has been the custom and law in our school sys- 
tem, ever since we came out from the war of 
the Eevolution ! And the very first step, and 
a daring step it is, too, towards an ecclesiastic- 
al despotism in our Common Schools, is this 
curse and excommunication upon the Scrip- 
tures and religious instruction, as sectarian, at 
the outcry of the Priests and politicians of a 
religious hierarchy. And this is a deliberate 
argument, (if such incongruou.s and contra- 
dictory assertions can be called argument,) 
presented by the President of the Board of 
Education in New York, to an American Ed- 
ucational Convention in Pittsburgh ! And 
although the author must be perfectly v/ell 
aware that never in any case, has any creed 
been introduced or sanctioned in the public 
schools, yet he artfully joins the reading of 
the Bible, and the use of the Lord's Prayer, 
with the mention of the Catechism, and the 



THE FREE SCHOOL SYSTEM. 235 

repetition of the Apostles' Creed and the Ten 
Commandments ; and as if there could be no 
such thing as religion in our schools without 
sectarianism, denounces the whole as offensive, 
and demands the entire divorce of secular 
learning from religion, which he argues should 
be restricted to the Sabbath Schools. 

That it may be seen that nothing is exag- 
gerated, we present the following extract from 
the address b}^ E. C. Benedict, Esq., President 
of the Board of Education of ISTew York, 
delivered before the American Educational 
Convention in Pittsburgh, August 11, 1853. 
The despotic style in which Mr. Benedict 
refers to the conscientious "few," who might 
complain of the exclusion of the Bible, is to 
be noted. He assumes that the right way of 
education would be to exclude the Bible and 
religious instruction, and then says, in effect, 
that if we take that way, we can afford to 
despise and disregard the complainants against 
it, lecause of their weakness ! Kot an intimation 
is breathed, or hinted at, that those who demand 
the continuance of the Bible in our pubhc 
schools, have any conscience, or any rights iu 



236 ESTABLISHMENT OF 

the matter; but tliey can be despised and 
trampled on, because they are few and weak ! 
^' We can do right — ayc can do what ought 
to satisfy all, and the unfounded complaints 
of a few will be but the expression o? their 
weakness. What should be our rational rule 
of conduct? Whenever we can find a few 
children together shall we compel them to lay 
aside their occupation for the time and read 
the Bible, or say their prayers, or perform some 
other religious duty ? Will it be sure to make 
them better? Will it be sure to give them 
religious instruction — to require it at the 
dancing-school, the riding-school, the music- 
school, the visiting-party, and the play-ground 
— shall studies, and sports, and plays, and 
prayers, and Bible, and catechism, be all placed 
on the same level ? Shall we insist that secular 
learning cannot be vfell taught unless it is 
mixed with sacred ? Shall algebra and geom- 
etry be always interspersed with religion instead 
of quod erat demonstrandum. Shall we say 
selaJi and amen? Shall we bow at the sign 
plus? Can we not learn the multiplication 
table without saying grace over it? So of 



THE FEEE SCHOOL SYSTEM. 237 

religious instruction, will it be improved by a 
mixture of profane learning ? Shall tlie cliild 
be taught to mix his spelling lessons with his 
prayerS; and his table-book with his catechism ? 
If there were any necessary relation between 
religious and secular instruction, which re- 
quired that they should be kept together, the 
subject would have another aspect. But no 
one has ever maintained that the religious 
teacher, the minister of religion and the office- 
bearers in the church, should mix secular in- 
struction with their more solemn and sacred 
inculcations. I should be almost charged with 
profanity, if I should attempt to exhibit the 
sacrilegious folly of mixing these earthly 
alloys with the precious and virgin gold of 
divine truth ; if I should exhibit the 23reacher 
as pointing to the grammatical construction, 
the rhetorical finish, the oratorical display of 
his discourses as a necessary part of his teach- • 
ing in the sacred desk ; if I should show you 
the ritual of the church prescribing mathemat- 
ics and metaphysics for fast days, and Belle 
Lettres for festivals, and subjecting the mj^s- 
terious and life-giving elements of the holy 



238 ESTABLISHMENT OF 

eucliarist to the analysis of a chemical lecture. 
No, no, these sacred matters are set apart; 
they are themselves alone ; they are by divine 
appointment intrusted to appropriate keeping, 
and let us beware that we are not struck down, 
if by extending our profane aid to the ark of 
Grod, we doubt the sufficiency of the divine 
protection. 

'^Now, the reading of the Bible, the repeat- 
ing of the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, 
and the Ten Commandments in school, is 
ritualistic and not educational. It is not for 
improvement in secular learnings nor in sacred 
learning. It is intended merely as a religious 
ceremony, and, if it give offence, is it not an 
unnecessary offence ? What if w^e say no one 
has a right to be offended, still we have no 
right to offend them, and deprive them of an 
inestimable blessing by mixing with it what to 
them is not only unpleasant and repulsive, 
but, in their opinion, unwholesome. Turn the 
tables — substitute for the reading of the Scrip- 
tures at the opening of the schools the simplest 
and least offensive of the religious ceremonies 
of the Eoman Catholic Church — reading from 



THE FEEE SCHOOL SYSTEM. 239 

the missal some portions of it to wliicli in 
itself there would be no objection ; insist that 
the school shall bow at the name of Jesus; 
shall always speak of the Virgin Mary as the 
Blessed Yirgin^ or the Holy Mother of God, 
and see if all of us would be willing to send 
our children there day by day. See if the 
pulpits and the ecclesiastical conventions 
throughout the land would not re-echo the 
word of alarm; and why should we compel 
the Jews, who are numerous in our cities, to 
listen to the New Testament; to repeat the 
Lord's Prayer, or the Apostles' Creed, or be 
taught the mysteries of redemption, or leave 
the schools?" 

Mr. Benedict speaks of '^overthrowing the 
great question of Common Schools by a mere 
form or ceremony." What is meant by over- 
throwing a question, it would be difficult to 
say ; what is meant by the declaration, " That 
the reading of the Bible is not for improve- 
ment, but is a mere ceremony, and a profane 
aid to the ark of God," may be more clear; 
and the assertion, '' That there is not only no 
necessary relation between religious and secu- 



240 THE FREE SCHOOL SYSTEM. 

lar instruction, but tliat the mingling of them 
is sacrilegious folly," seems an extreme of com- 
bined shallowness and hardihood, upon which 
no man in his senses could have stumbled.. 
Yet here, in this production, it is deliberately 
presented to a Christian community! Let 
this address be placed alongside the Eeport 
of the State Commissioners above quoted, 
and the various provisions, recommendations, 
and laws in the School Sj'stem, for fifty 
years; and also let it be compared with 
the sentiments and recommendations of Wash- 
ington, Story, Webster, Clinton, Tompkins, 
Lewis, Chancellor Kent, and other eminent 
civil as well as religious writers on this subject 
still living. Especially let us now set it in 
comparison and contrast with a portion of Mr. 
Webster's celebrated argument, of such in- 
comparable beauty and pov/er, in regard to the 
inevitable infidel tendencjr of any scheme of 
education that excludes religion, and the ne- 
cessity of constantly mingling, Avith all other 
knov/ledo-e, instruction in religious truth. 



grpmtnt si §n\\'nl Mt^s^ttx 

AGAINST THE PLAN OF EDUCATION T7ITH0UT THE BIBLE.** 

*^ The cMdren," said Mr. Webster, ^' are 
taken before they know the alphabet. They 
are kept till the period of early manhood, and 
then sent out into the world to enter upon its 
business and affairs. By this time the charac- 
ter will have been stamped. For if there is 
any truth in the Bible, if there is any truth in 
those oracles which soar above all human au- 
thority, or if anything be established as a gen- 
eral fact by the experience of mankind, in this 
first third of human life the character is 
formed. And what sort of a character is 
likely to be made by this process, this experi- 
mental system of instruction ? What is likely 
to be the effect of this system on the minds 
of these children, thus left solely to its perni- 
cious influence, with no one to care for their 

* Before the Supreme Court of the United States, in the 
case of Girard. 

*21 



242 ARGUMENT OF DANIEL "WEBSTER. 

spiritual welfare in tMs world or the next? 
They are to be left entirely to the tender mer- 
cies of those who will try npon them this ex- 
periment of moral philosophy or philosophical 
morality. Morality without sentiment ; benev- 
olence towards man, without a sense of respon- 
sibility towards God; the duties of this life 

t/ 7 

performed without any reference to the life 
which is to come ; such is this theorj^ of useful 
education. 

*^ The scheme is derogatory to Christianity, 
because it rejects Christianity from the educa- 
tion of youth, by rejecting its teachers, by re- 
jecting the ordinary agencies of instilling the 
Christian religion into the minds of the young. 
It is derogatory, because there is a positive 
rejection of Christianity ; because it rejects the 
ordinary means and agencies of Christianity. 

*' There is nothing original in this plan. It 
has its origin in a deistical source, but not 
from the highest school of infidelity. It is all 
idle, it is a mockery, and an insult to common 
sense, to maintain that a school for the instruc- 
tion of youth, from which Christian instruction 
by Christian teachers is sedulously and vigor- 



AKGUMENT OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 243 

ously shut out, is nofdeistical and infidel both 
in its purpose and in its tendency. I insist, 
therefore, that this plan of education is, in this 
respect, derogatory to Christianity, in opposi- 
tion to it, and calculated either to subvert or 
to supersede it. 

^' In the next place, this scheme of education 
is derogatory to Christianity, because it pro- 
ceeds upon the presumption that the Christian 
religion is not the only true foundation, or any 
necessary foundation of morals. The ground 
taken is, that religion is not necessary to mo- 
ralitj^ ; that benevolence may be insured by 
habit, and that all the virtues may flourish, 
and be safely left to the chance of flourishing, 
without touching the \yaters of the living 
spring of religious responsibility. With him 
who thinks thus, what can be the value of the 
Christian revelation? So the Christian world 
has not thought ; for by that Christian world, 
throughout its broadest extent, it has been and 
is, held as a fundamental truth, that religion is 
the only solid basis of morals, and that moral 
instruction, not resting on this basis, is only a 
building upon sand. And at what age of the 



244 ARGUMEKT OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 

Christian eraliave tliose who j)rofessedto teach 
the Christian religion, or to believe in its au- 
thority and importancej not insisted on the 
absolute necessity of inculcating its principles 
and its precepts upon the minds of the young? 
In what age, and by what sect, where, when, 
by whom, has religious truth been excluded 
from the education of youth ? Nowhere ; 
never. Everywhere, and at all times, it has 
been and is, regarded as essential. It is of the 
essence, the vitality, of useful instruction." 

Mr. "Webster then developed the Divine au- 
thority and teaching of the Old and New Tes- 
taments on this subject, with such dignity, 
beauty, and deep feeling, that it would be dif- 
ficult to find, in all the records of forensic 
eloquence, anything of greater mastery and 
power. The extracts which we here reprint, 
need no apology for their length, because they 
commend themselves to every mind as the 
most apt and admirable answer that could be 
made to the sophistry which would represent 
religion and religious instruction in our com- 
mon schools, as a sectarian thing. 

'^My learned friend," said Mr. Webster, 



ARGUMENT OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 245 

" has referred with propriety to one of the 
commandments of the Decalogue ; but there 
is another, a first commandment, and that is a 
precept of religion, and it is in subordination 
to this that the moral precepts of the Deca- 
logue are proclaimed. This first great com- 
mandment teaches man that there is one, and 
only one, great First Cause, one, and only one, 
proper object of human worship. This is the 
great, the ever fresh, the overflowing fountain 
of all revealed truth ; without it, human life is a 
desert, of no known termination on any side, 
but shut in on all sides by a dark and impene- 
trable horizon. Without the light of this 
truth, man knows nothing of his origin, and 
nothing of his end. And when the Decalogue 
was delivered to the Jews, with this great an- 
nouncement and command at its head, what 
said the inspired law-giver ? that it should be 
kept from children ? that it should be reserved 
as a communication fit only for mature age ? 
Far, far otherwise. ^ And these words, which 
I command thee this day, shall be in thy heart. 
And thou shalt teach them diligently 
UNTO thy children ; and shalt talk of them 
21* 



246 AKGUMENT OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 

when tlioii sittest in thine house, and when 
thou walkest by the way, when thou liest 
down, and when thou risest up.' 

*' There is an authority still more imposing 
and awful. When little children were brought 
into the presence of the Son of Grod, his dis- 
ciples proposed to send them away; but he 
said. Suffer little children to come imto me. 
Unto me; he did not send them first for les- 
sons in morals to the schools of the Pharisees 
or to the unbelieving Sadducees, nor to read 
the precepts and lessons phylacteried on the 
garments of the Jewish Priesthood; he said 
nothing of different creeds or clashing doc- 
trines ; but he opened at once to the youthful 
mind the everlasting fountain of living waters, 
the only source of eternal truths : Suffer little 
children to come unto me. And that injunc- 
tion is of perpetual obligation. It addresses 
itself to day with the same earnestness and the 
same authority which attended its first utter- 
ance to the Christian world. It is of force 
everywhere, and at all times. It extends to 
the ends of the earth, it will reach to the end 
of time, always and everywhere sounding in 



ARGUMENT OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 247 

the ears of men, witli an emphasis which no 
repetition can weaken^ and with an authority 
which nothing can supersede, Suffer little 
children to come unto me. 

"Before man knows his origin and destiny, 
he knows that he is to die. Then comes that 
most urgent and solemn demand for light that 
ever proceeded, or can proceed, from the pro- 
found and anxious broodings of the human 
soul. If a man die^ shall he live again ? And 
that question, nothing but God, and the relig- 
ion of God, can solve. Eeligion does solve it^ 
and teaches every man that he is to live again, 
and that the duties of this life have reference 
to the life which is to come. And hence, 
since the introduction of Christianity, it has 
been the duty as it has been the effort of the 
great and good, to sanctify human knowledge, 
to bring it to the fount, and to baptize learning 
into Christianity ; to gather up all its produc- 
tions, its earliest and its latest, its blossoms and 
its fruits, and lay them all upon the altar of 
religion and virtue." 

Mr. Webster then again exposes, as nothing 
better than infidelity, the pretence that relig- 



248 ARGUMENT OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 

ioTis instruction is sectarianism, and tlie policy 
of banishing it ontliat ground. He takes up 
tlie objection commonly urged by the opponent 
of religion, as follows : 

" There is such a multitude of sects, and such 
diversity of opinion, that he will exclude all 
religion ! That is the objection urged by all 
the lower and more vulgar schools of infidelity 
throughout the world. In all these schools, 
called schools of Eationalism in Germany, 
Socialism in England, and by various other 
names in various countries which they infest, 
this is the universal cant. The first step of 
all these philosophical moralists and regenera- 
tors of the human race is to attack the agency 
through which religion and Christianity are 
administered to man. But in this there is no- 
thing new or original. We find the same mode 
of attack and remark in Paine's Age of Eea- 
son. 

'^ But this objection to the multitude and dif- 
ferences of sects is but the old story, the old 
infidel argument. It is notorious that there 
are certain great religious truths which are ad- 
mitted and believed by all Christians, All 



AEGUMENT OF DANIEL WEBSTEE. 249 

believe in tlie existence of a God. All be- 
lieve in the immortality of tlie soul. All be- 
lieve in the responsibility, in another world, 
for our conduct in this. All believe in the 
divine authority of the New Testament. And 
cannot all these great truths be taught to chil- 
dren, without their minds being perplexed with 
clashing doctrines and sectarian controversies ? 
Most certainly they can." 

Mr. Webster then takes the supposition of 
a youth educated, say from six to eighteen, in 
secular learning merely, without religious 
teaching, which is the very proposition offered 
to a Christian community, in the demand that 
from our common schools the Bible and all 
religious instruction shall be banished, and 
carries such a youth into the business of life, 
and shows what would be the consequence of 
such a scheme, in the subversion of all moral- 
ity, Christianity, and government. 

*^ The Christian religion, its general principles, 
must ever be regarded among us as the foun- 
dation of civil society. But this system, in its 
tendencies and effects, is opposed to all relig- 
ions of every kind. Religious tenets, I take 



250 AKGUMENT OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 

it, and I suppose it will be generally conceded, 
mean religious opinions ; and if a youth lias 
arrived at tlie age of eigliteen, and has no 
religious tenets, it is very plain that he has no 
religion. We will suppose the case of a youth 
of eighteen, who has just left school, and has 
gone through an education of philosophical 
morality. He comes then into the world to 
choose his religious tenets. The next day, 
perhaps, after leaving school, he comes into a 
court of la\y, to give testimony as a witness. 
Sir, I protest that by such a system he would 
be disfranchised. He is asked, ' What is your 
religion?' His reply is, ^0, I have not yet 
chosen any ; I am going to look round, and 
see which suits me best.' He is asked, ^ Are 
you a Christian?' He replies, ' That involves 
religiou.s tenets, and as yet I have not been 
allowed to entertain any.' Again, 'Do you 
believe in a future state of rewards and pun- 
ishments?' And he answers, "That involves 
sectarian controversies, which have carefally 
been kept from me.' ' Do you believe in the 
existence of a God.' He answers that there 
are clashing doctrines involved in these things, 



AKGUMENT OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 251 

which, he has been taught to have nothing to 
do with ; that the belief in the existence of a 
God, being one of the first questions of religion, 
he is shortly about to think of that proposition. 
Why, sir, it is vain to talk about the destructive 
tendency of such a system ; to argue upon it, 
is to insult the understanding of every man ; 
it is raere^ sheer ^ low^ ribald^ vulgar deis7)i and 
infidelity! It opposes all that is in heaven, 
and all on earth that is worth being on earth. 
It destroys the connecting link betv^een the 
creature and the Creator; it opposes that great 
system of universal benevolence and goodness 
that binds man to his Maker. 

^^ No religion till he is eighteen ! What would 
be the condition of all our families, of all our 
children, if religious fathers and rehgious 
mothers were to teach their sons and daugh- 
ters no religious tenets till they were eighteen? 
What would become of their morals, their 
character, their purity of heart and life, their 
hope for time and eternity? What would be- 
come of all those thousand ties of sweetness, 
benevolence, love, and Christian feeling, that 
now render our young men and young 



252 ARGUMENT OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 

maidens like comely plants growing up by a 
streamlet-side ; the graces and the grace of 
opening manhood, of blossoming womanhood ? 
What would become of all that now renders 
the social circle lovely and beloved ? What 
would become of society itself? How could 
it exist? And is that to be considered a 
charity which strikes at the root of all this ; 
which subverts all the excellence and the 
charms of social life ; which tends to destroy 
the very foundation and frame-work of soci- 
ety, both in its practices and in its opinions ; 
which subverts the whole decency, the whole 
morality, as well as the whole Christianity and 
government of society ? No, sir ! no, sir ! 

'^It has been said, on the other side, that 
there was no teaching against religion or 
Christianity in this system. I deny it. The 
whole is one bold proclamation against Chris- 
tianity and religion of every creed. The chil- 
dren are to learn to be suspicious of Chris- 
tianity and religion ; to keep clear of it, that 
their youthful hearts may not become suscep- 
tible of the influences of Christianity or religion 
in the slightest degree. They are to be told 



ARGUMENT OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 253 

and taught tliat religion is not a matter for 
tlie heart or conscience, but for the decision 
of the cool judgment of maturer years ; that 
at that period when the whole Christian world 
deem it most desirable to instil the chastening 
influences of Christianity into the tender and 
comparatively pure mind and heart of the 
child, ere the cares and corruptions of the 
world have reached and seared it, at that 
period the child is to be carefully excluded 
therefrom, and to be told that its influence is 
pernicious and dangerous in the extreme. 
Why, the whole system is a constant preach- 
ing against Christianity and against religion, 
and I insist that there is no charity, and can 
be no charity, in that system of instruction 
from which Christianity is excluded." 

And now we ask, in connection with this re- 
view of our history in the matter of a common 
school education, Who have the right to judge 
and to have their judgment respected, as to 
the nature of the school system that we need^ 
if not those men of sagacity, patriotism, piety, 

and comprehensive statesmanship, who found- 

22 



254' THE LESSON AND THE WARNING. 

ed it for America, for onr own country, in 
view of our own peculiar responsibilities ? 

The men y/ho founded it for America, and 
not for Eome ; for the wants of our own coun- 
try, and of those whose whole dependence is 
on God and the truth, and freedom of the 
truth everywhere, and not for those who de- 
pend upon the darkness, nor with reference to 
that System Avhich can flourish only in exclu- 
sion of the light. It is an American system, 
not Austrian, nor Eoman, nor European, that 
w^e are to support, and therefore an education 
under Divine Truth is needed. A merely 
secular education may be suf&cient in Europe, 
where governm^ents rule by bayonets, but not 
here, where government depends on the intel- 
ligence, morality, and religion of the people. 
"Where another nation might flourish upon 
mere secularism, we should go down. We 
cannot divorce education from religion, and 
sustain the Eepublic. 

A deliberate argument for the divorce of 
education from religion is so astounding an 
occurrence among a Christian people, that we 
do not wonder that those abroad, in whose 



THE LESSON AND THE WAENING. 255 

way such an argaiment may have happened to 
fall, should assert, as they have done, that the 
element of religion is absolutely not introduc- 
able into our educational system, on account 
of peculiarities in our habits, and in the theory 
and practice of our national and State gov- 
ernments. And then they base upon this 
prodigious misconception or falsehood, their 
conclusion, that after all, the exclusion of re- 
ligion from a system of public education can- 
not be so very dreadful or dangerous a thing, 
if in a country like the United States the 
people can grow up without it, so religious 
and so prosperous. 

Now, even our limited historical surveys 
will have shown that our educational system, 
so far from excluding religious principle, re- 
ligious instruction, and a religious bias, has 
been for a longer time and to a greater extent, 
based upon the Bible, and carried forward 
with religious truth as its vital element, than 
any other ediicational system in the world. 
Our religion and prosperity as a people are 
owing to this reality, this religious educational 
training, and have not been gained or main- 



256 THE LESSON AND THE WAENING. 

tained in tlie neglect or exclusion of religious 
truth. The rejection of the Bible and of all 
religious bias, from our systems of education, 
wherever attempted, or partially successful, is 
an innovation ; a very daring and dangerous 
innovation, for the most part attempted and 
accomplished at the instigation of political 
demagogues, catering for Eomish votes. We 
wish the people of England to understand this. 
We wish them to understand that till within 
a very few years the Bible and religion have 
been free in all our schools, and are so still by 
law, and in most places by custom ; and that 
it is only by infidel, Eomish, and political in- 
trigue and management, that anywhere relig- 
ious truth is shut out. 



against t\)t Christian ^uMt\. 

In their eager zeal against sectarianism, the 
history of the school system shows that onr 
school authorities and legislators have some- 
times ran into the very evil they were so 
anxious to avoid. This is painfully manifest 
in a decision incorporated into the body of 
School Laws, and published in chapter VIII., 
having therefore the sanction of the State ; a 
decision disposing of the Christian Sabbath as 
follows: — ^" Schools maybe kept on Sunday 
for the benefit of those persons who observe 
Saturday as holy time, and the teacher must 
be paid for that day by those who send to 
School." 

The inconsiderateness and impropriety of 
this legislation, and its inconsistency with all 
22* 



258 LEGISLATION AGAINST 

the provisions of tlie scliool laws against sec- 
tarianism, will appear manifest on a moment's 
consideration. 

Indeed, if ever tliere was sectarian legis- 
lation, this is such. It singles ont the Jews, 
and legislates in their behalf, constituting in 
reality for them a sectional and sectarian 
school, on the very ground of their sectarian- 
ism, and because of it. It takes them into a 
peculiar union with the State, and that, too, 
in defiance of the conscientious scruples of 
nearly all other denominations united. It is 
not only a profanation of the Christian Sab- 
bath by law, but it goes the whole length of 
declaring that the Christian Sabbath ha-s no 
divine sanction, is not a divinely-appointed 
day to be kept holy, but maj^ properly be 
spent in a secular employment. It singles out 
the Jewish Sabbath as more holy than the 
Christian Sabbath, because it is a distinct pro- 
vision for the profanation -of the Christian 
Sabbath, hj an employment for Vv^hich the 
Jewish Sabbath is considered as too holy. It 
is not satisfied v\dth leaving the Jews at liberty 
to do what they please, either on their Sab- 



THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH. 259 

bath, or the Christian Sabbath, but it takes 
hold with them, and makes itself part and 
parcel with them, in their profanation of the 
Christian Sabbath. It gives them the ad .an- 
tage of the free common school systeui, for 
the profanation of the Lord's Day, by the 
same employment which thej^ would consider 
a profanation of the Jewish Sabbath, but 
which, by a legislation in behalf of their par- 
ticular conscience, is declared to be no prof- 
anation of the Christian Sabbath. 

An institution, supported by the people, is 
used in this case for the profanation of the 
Christian Sabbath. If it were no profanation 
to keep the common schools on holy time, 
then no reason why the Jews should not, as 
all the others, use the Saturdo.y for that pur- 
pose, and no need of any law for them, per- 
mitting them to take the Ghristian SaMaih ; 
but if it were a profanation to keep the com- 
mon schools on holy time, then as much a 
profanation of the Christian as of the Jewish ; 
but the State, in making this law, does really 
declare that it is a profanation of the Jewish, 
but no profanation of the Christian, The 



260 LEGISLATIOISr AGAINST 

State deliberately chooses the conscience of 
the Jew, and allies itself with, that, in prefer- 
ence to the conscience of the Christian, and 
our institution, which Christians are taxed to 
support, is, by law, applied to enable the 
Jews to profane the Christian's holy day. 
This is verily an outrage, not only on Christi- 
anity, but upon the conscientious rights of 
the Christian. The State is not content with 
leaving Jews and Christians to do as they 
please on their respective Sabbaths, the Jews 
having the right of teaching their children or 
not, and the Christians the right of teaching 
their's or not ; but it compels the Christians 
to sustain and sanction the Jews, in the work 
of profaning the Christian Sabbath. It takes 
the school-houses of the people, and applies 
them to that purpose, and it takes the money 
of the people to support those schools. 

But this is not all. There must be teachers 
on Sunday, and for all branches taught on any 
day of the week, and if a corps of Jewish 
teachers be marshalled and appointed for that 
day, this makes a double sectarianism adopted 
by the State. But if not the Jewish teachers, 



THE CHEISTIAN SABBATH. 261 

and others should refuse, then might you see 
the anomaly of the ordinary Christian teach- 
ers of our common schools dismissed from 
their employment, for refusing to serve the 
Jews on the Christian Sabbath. There is no 
alternative, if this provision be carried out. 
Either Jewish teachers must be hired for that 
particular day, under the authority and care 
of the State, or the ordinary teachers must 
continue their services, and so be deprived of 
their Sabbath, and made to labor in their em- 
ployment incessantly, seven days in the week. 
Some persons must do the teaching thus pro- 
vided for, thus authorized by the State on the 
Christian Sabbath. Shall it be Jewish teach- 
ers, employed because of their sectarianism, 
and with direct reference to that ? This makes 
a sectarian school. Shall it be other teachers, 
compelled or hired to continue their ordinary 
week-teaching through the Christian Sabbath, 
for the accommodation of Jewish prejudices? 
This makes it doubly sectarian and oppressive. 
Now, if any superintendent, or any mem- 
ber of the legislature, had proposed a bill for 
the establishment of a Sabbath School, tech- 



262 LEGISLATION AGAINST 

nically so-called, tliat is, a school for doctrinal 
religious instruction, in connection with, and 
as part of tlie common school system, a 
school for children in religion on the Sabbath, 
in the public school rooms, to be used for that 
purpose, undoubtedly there would have been 
a gTcat cry made against this measure, as secta- 
rian. But provision under law cannot only 
be proposed, but established for the profanation 
of the Christian Sabbath by secular instruction 
05 on all other days^ for the convenience and 
accommodation of the Jews, or other like 
sects, and that measure is not regarded as sect- 
arian, or partial, or improper ! Could there 
be a more glaring anomaly and inconsistency ? 
The eager desire to be extremely hberal, and 
to have the school system removed to the far- 
thest opposite point from the iniquity of sect- 
arianism, has caused our legislators or Super- 
intendents to over- vault themselves, and fall 
on the other side. The effort to make the sys* 
tem of education a political stalking-horse, 
produced the same result, when the school- 
books were mangled and mutilated at the com- 
mand of the sect of Romanists. But this in- 



THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH. 263 

trasion on the Sabbath is worse in some re- 
spects than that sectarian foray upon the 
school-books. It is a deliberate legalized prof- 
anation of the Lord's Day. 

But some will answer, Do you call instruct- 
ing the poor, or the rich, or any children, in 
reading, writing, and arithmetic on the Sab- 
bath, a ]3rofanation of the Sabbath? J^ay, 
not we have done this, but the State. The 
appointed School authorities take the opinion 
and conscience of the Jews, that such employ- 
ment, such secular instruction, is a profanation 
of holy time^ and by law protect that conscience, 
and provide for their profaning the holy time 
of the Christian Sabbath instead of the Jewish, 
by precisely the same employment. If it be 
a profanation of the Jews' Sabbath, on the plea 
that that is holy time, it is just as much a prof- 
anation of the Christian Sabbath, if thajt is 
holy time. The State authorities have de- 
clared that it is a profanation of the Jews' 
Sabbath, and on that account have given them 
the Christian Sabbath to profane instead. 

If it is a profanation of the Jews' Sabbath, 
then also a profanation of the Christian ; but 



264 LEGISLATION AGAINST 

iinot a profanation of the Jews' Sabbath, then 
no need of giving them the Christian SabbatK 
for such profanation instead of their own. 
But by this peculiar legislation the State has 
in effect declared that common school instruc- 
tion is a profanation of holy time, and there- 
fore a profanation of the Christian Sabbath, if 
that be holy time. But the Christian religion 
establishes it as holy time, as unquestionably 
as the Jewish religion establishes the Jewish 
Sabbath as holy time ; and therefore the legis- 
lature, (for it is under their sanction that this 
law is engrossed and published,)* in ordaining 
that the Christian Sabbath shall be given up 
to the Jews for common school instruction, 
instead of the Jewish Sabbath, have elected 
and inaugurated the Jewish religion as more 
sacred than the Christian. And yet, they seem 
not to have dreamed of there being anything 
sectarian in such Jewish and unchristian legis- 
lation. 

The dilemma is as follows : We take first 
the supposition that the legislature believe in 
a Sabbath. Then it follows that the legisla- 
ture either believe the Christian Sabbath to be 



THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH, 2o5 

hjoly time or not. If not, (if the character of 
such sacredness do not belong to the idea and 
nature of the Sabbath,) then neither is the 
Jewish Sabbath holy time ; so that the instruc- 
tion of the Jews might as well go on upon 
that day, as any other. But if it he holy time, 
then common school instruction of the Jews 
is a profanation of the Christian, as well as of 
the Jews' Sabbath, 

But again, on the supposition that such 
sacredness does belong to the nature of the 
true Sabbath, either the legislature believe 
that the Jews'' Sabbath is holy time, or not. 
If not, then the Christian Sabbath is; and 
they have no right to provide for the violation 
of the Christian Sabbath by those who dis- 
regard it Disregard it they may, for them- 
selves, but the legislature have no right to 
provide for such disregard by law. 
^ On the other hand, if they believe the Jew- 
ish Sabbath to be holy time, the true Sabbath, 
then the37^ have no right, in direct contraven- 
tion of that belief, to profane that day, Satur- 
da}^, b}^ the secular instruction of any of the 
children in any of the schools. They should 
22 



266 LEGISLATIOX AGAINST 

shut the schools, and keep the holj time holy, 
after the example of the Jews ; unless, indeed, 
they will institute Sabbath schools of a Satur- 
day, which again would be violently opposed 
as sectarian. 

But once more. The legislature and the 
people either belieye one day or the other, to 
be holy time, or neither. If neither be holy 
time, then they have no right to legislate for 
the keeping of either in preference to the 
other. 

But here, perhaps, some one is ready to say 
that the legislature, or the superintendents 
under sanction of the legislature, though be- 
lieving or admitting that Sunday is the Chris- 
tian Sabbath, yet legislated for its profanation 
to ease the conscience of the Jews, and supply 
their loss of Saturday by a sacrifice to them 
of our Sunday. But this, again, is just rob- 
bing Peter to pay Paul. Or rather, it is 
robbing God, to make way for human opinion 
and convenience. It is the scene of Christian 
legislators violating their own consciences, and 
the conscience of all the people who believe in 
the holiness of the Christian Sabbath, to en- 



THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH. 267 

able the Jews to pursue their worldly avoca- 
tions on the Lord's Day. If the case were, to 
enable the Jews to avoid violating their con- 
science in profaning their Sabbath, it would be 
quite different. But there is no compulsion 
either way. If there were, and one party or 
the other were under necessity of such profa- 
nation, the question then might be, whether 
the legislature and all Christian sects should 
violate their conscience for the ease of the 
Jews, or the Jews their' s for the ease of all the 
rest. 

But that is not the case, and cannot be. No 
Jew, nor any person that keeps Saturday as 
holy time, is compelled to violate it ; and, at 
the uttermost, in the case before us, the cost of 
keeping it can be only the loss of a half- day's 
secular instruction, since none of the schools 
are kept more than half the day on Saturday. 
But, on the contrary, it is the case of a Chris- 
tian legislature giving up the whole Christian 
Sabbath for profanation, in order to supply 
the loss of half the Jewish Sabbath, considered 
too sacred to he profaned. The idea and ac- 
knowledgement of profanation lies inevitably 



268 THE OHEISTIAN SABBATH. 

embraced in tlie very exemption of tlie Jews 
from secular instruction in holy time^ and their 
compensation by giving them the Christian 
Sabbath instead of their own for such ac- 
knowledged profanation. The bare insertion 
of the condition that those who send that day 
shall pay the teacher, makes little difference, 
since the school-houses, and the whole pre- 
rogative, provision, and advantage of the sys- 
tem, are bestowed for their use. 



The historical example of Connecticut is 
interesting and instructive. As early as 1656, 
explicit laws were added to the general law 
by Avhicli the schools were first instituted, and 
the deputies, constables, and other officers in 
public trust, were required to take care '^that 
all their children and apprentices as they grow 
capable, may, through God's blessing, attain at 
least so much as to be able duly to read the 
Scriptures, and other good and profitable 
printed books in the English tongue, and in 
some competent measure to understand the 
main grounds and principles of the Christian 
religion necessary to salvation." By repeated 
legislation, and patient effort, the school sys- 
tem was brought to such a degree of efficacy, 
that, as President Kingsley remarked, '^ for 
22^' 



270 COMMON SCHOOL SYSTEM 

nearly a centuiy and a half, a native of Con- 
necticut, of mature age, unable to read the 
English tongue, has been looked upon as a 
prodigy. The source of the wide-spread and 
incalculable benefit of popular education in 
America," President Kingsley continues, "may 
be traced, without danger of error, to a few 
of the leading Puritans. If the early Pil- 
grims, more particularly of Massachusetts and 
Connecticut, had not struggled and toiled for 
this great object, and if they had not been im- 
mediately succeeded by men who had imbibed 
a large portion of the same spirit^ the school- 
system of New England would not now exist." 

" The schools of this State," says the Connecticut Com- 
jnon School Journal, " were founded and supported chiefly 
for the purpose of perpetuating civil and religious knowl- 
edge and liberty, as the early laws of the colony explicit- 
ly declare. Those laws, some of which were published in 
the first number of this Journal, as clearly declare, that 
the chief means to be used to attain those objects, was the 
reading of the Holy Scriptures. 

" In many schools, in later years, the Bible has not been 
used; though there is reason to believe that the ancient 
custom of our venerable ancestors has recently been grad- 
ually reviving. Circumstances have favored its restora- 
tion ; and increasing light on the principles of sound ed- 
ucation cannot fail to establish it everywhere. 

" Certificates are in our hands, from experienced instruct- 



OF CONNECTICUT. 271 

ors out of this State, which bear strong testimony to the 
happy influences exerted in their schools, by the daily use 
of the Scriptures. 

" Different teachers we hav^ seen, who used the Bible in 
different ways: some as a class-book, some as a text-book ; 
and it is interesting to see in how many forms it may be 
brought into use. Some teachers, with a map of Palestine 
before them, will give most interesting lessons on almost 
any book in the Bible, by mingling geography, history, 
ancient manners and customs, with moral and religious 
considerations. Others make the Bible the law-book of 
the school ; and by showing that they consider themselves 
and their pupils equally bound to conform their lives and 
thoughts to its sacred dictates, exercise a species of disci- 
pline of the happiest kind. Others still, by the aid of 
printed questions, or some systematic plan of study, em- 
ploy the Bible in training the intellect, storing the mem- 
ory, and furnishing the fancy with the richest treasures 
of literature. Others think that the various styles found 
in the sacred volume, offer the very best exercises for 
practice in reading with propriety and effect; while a 
critical attention to the character, situation, and feelings 
of tke speakers, which such exercises require, has favorar 
ble moral influences. Finally, other teachers believe that 
the daily reading of the Bible in schools, is of essential 
benefit to the pupils in various ways ; and that the fre- 
quent repetition of the Word of God in the hearing even 
of those too young to read, is an inestimable blessing — a 
part of the birthright of every child in a Christian land, 
which cannot be rightfully withholden. 

" To these views our readers may add their own as they 
often and seriously consider the subject. It is one which 
will probably be ever esteemed a vital one in Connecticut; 
and if Monsieur Cousin so warmly urged upon the gov- 
ernment of France, to make religious instruction the cor- 
uer-stone of their national system of education, and urged 



272 COMMON SCHOOL SYSTEM 

with success the example of Trussia, we may with greater 
confidence invite the people of our State to supply their 
schools with the Scriptures, and point to the laws passed 
by their fathers for this very end, nearly two centuries 
ago, and (so far as we have the ability to comprehend so 
vast a subject) to the noble effects produced even by 
their imperfect observance." 

"The interests of education," says Chancellor Kent, 
speaMng particularly of the State of Connecticut, " had 
engaged the attention of the l^ew England colonists from 
the earliest settlement of the country ; and the system of 
common and grammar schools and of academical and col- 
legiate instruction, was interwoven with the primitive 
views and institutions of the Puritans. Everything in 
their genius and disposition was favorable to the growth 
of freedom and learning, but with a tendency to stern 
regulations for the maintenance of civil and religious 
order. They were a grave and thinking people, of much 
energy of character, and of lofty and determined purpose. 
Religion was with them a deep and j^owerful sentiment, 
and of absorbing interest. The first emigrants had studied 
the oracles of truth as a text-book, and they were pro- 
foundly affected by the unqualified commands, the awful 
sanctions, and the sublime views and animating hopes 
and consolations which accompanied the revelation of 

life and immortality The avowed object 

of their emigration to K"ew England was to enjoy and 
propagate the reformed Protestant faith in the purity of 
its discipline and worship. They intended to found re- 
publics on the basis of Christianity, and to secure relig- 
ious liberty under the auspices of a commonwealth. With 
this primary view they were early led to make strict 
provision for common school education, and the religious 

instruction of the people The Word of God 

was at that time almost the sole object of their solicitude 
and studies, and the principal design in planting ther- 



OF COKXECTICUT. 273 

selves on the banks of the Connecticut was to preserve 
the liberty and purity of the gospel. . . . .* We meet 
with the system of common schools in the earliest of the 
colonial records. Strict and accurate provision was made 
by law for the support of schools in each town, and a 
grammar school in each county ; and even family instruc- 
tion was placed under the vigilant supervision of the 
selectmen of the town. This system of free schools, sus- 
tained and enforced by law, has been attended with mo- 
mentous results, and it has communicated to the people 
of this State, and to every other part of ISTew England in 
which the system has prevailed, the blessings of order 
and security to an extent never before surpassed in the 
annals of mankind." 



€mm\\ MiM Splem of "^^mmtlixmtU. 

As early as 1647, less tlian twenty years 
from the date of their first charter, the Colony 
of Massachusetts Bay made provision by law 
for the support of schools at the public expense, 
for instruction in reading and writing, in every 
town containing fifty families; and for the 
support of a grammar-school, the instructor 
of which should be competent to prepare 
young men for the University, in every town 
containing one hundred families. This was a 
noble foundation, and it was the religious 
foresight of the Colonists that laid it. The 
preamble to the school law runs thus: — ^^It 
being one chief object of Satan to keep men 
from the knowledge of the Scripture, as in 
former times keeping them in unknown 
tongues, so in these latter times by persuading 



COMMON SCHOOLS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 275 

them from the use of tongues, that so at least 
the true sense and meaning of the original 
might be clouded and corrupted with false 
glosses of deceivers, therefore to the end that 
learning may not be buried in the graves of 
our forefathers in church and commonwealth, 
the Lord assisting our endeavors, it is ordered 
by this Court, and the authority thereof, that 
every township," &c. 

By this school lavf , provision was not only 
made for the schools, but for the religious 
character of the teacliers^ and none others but 
persons of religious faith and life were admit- 
ted, or suffered *'to be continued in the ofiice 
or place of teaching, educating, or instructing 
youth or children in college or schools." 

"Whatever were the causes," says Mr. Car- 
ter in his letters to "Wm. Prescott, ^' which led 
the Puritans of New England to the adoption 
of their liberal and enlightened policy in regard 
to free schools, the effects were certainly most 
happy upon the condition of the people. And 
with the advantages of their experience, and 
of living in a more enlightened age, we could 
hardly hope, on the whole, to make more noble 



276 COMMON SCHOOL SYSTEM 

exertions for tlie promotion of the same object. 
Their pions care of the morals of the young ; 
their deep and devoted interest in the general 
dissemination of knowledge ; and the sacrifices 
they endured to afford encouragement and 
patronage to those nurseries of piety and 
knowledge, the free schools, are without 
parallel in the history of this or any other 
country.'' 

Nurseries of piety and knowledge, because 
the Bible and its religious instruction were 
their foundation, and the children in them 
were trained under religious motives. But 
our forefathers would have rejected with hor- 
ror the thought of excluding the Bible and 
religious instruction from the schools. 

The school laws of Massachusetts contain 
the following comprehensive, religious, and 
remarkable enactment : — 

^' It shall be the dutj of the president, pro- 
fessors, and tutors of the University at Cam- 
bridge, and of the several colleges, and of all 
preceptors and teachers of academies, and all 
other instructors of youth, to exert their best 
endeavors to impress on the minds of children 



OF MASSACHUSETTS. 277 

and youth, committed to their care and in- 
striiction, the principles of piety, justice, and 
a sacred regard to truth, love to their country, 
humanity, and universal benevolence, so- 
briety, industry, and frugality, chastity, moder- 
ation, and temperance, and those other vir- 
tues which are the ornament of human society 
and the basis upon which a republican consti- 
tution is founded ; and it shall be the duty of 
such instructors to endeavor to lead their 
pupils into a clear understanding of the ten- 
dency of the above-mentioned virtues, to pre- 
serve and perfect a republican constitution, and 
secure the blessings of liberty, as well as to 
promote their future happiness ; and, also, to 
point out to them the evil tendency of the op- 
posite vices." 

There is no sectarianism in this enactment, 
but there is religion, and a ]3rovision for re- 
ligious instruction. The observance of this 
one law Avould, by the blessing of God, pro- 
duce, as the result of a common school edu- 
cation, an elevated Christian character in 
every pupil. The inculcation of religious 

truth is not left to the varying opinions or will 
23 



278 COMMON SCHOOLS OF MASSACHUSETTS, 

of successive schooi administrations, but is 
forever binding. No political manager, at the 
instigation of Eomanism, may brand sncli in- 
struction as sectarian, or accuse the Govern- 
ment of overstepping its functions in teaching 
the principles of piety, and leading the pupils 
into a clear understanding of them, Avhich yet 
cannot possibly be done, without the Word of 
God. The principles of piety cannot possibly 
be taught in any school, or b}^ any instructor, 
without religious truth, and a religious bias 
given to the instruction ; so that the theory 
that no system of public education can be im- 
partial, unless it excludes all distinctive re- 
ligious teaching, receives here the best pos- 
sible practical refutation, in the freest and 
most impartial and unsectarian school-system 
in the world. But the Bible itself is distinct- 
ive religious teaching, and a clear understand- 
ing of piety and virtue is not possible without 
the Bible ; if virtue be essential to be taught, 
the Bible is essential to be taught. 



|0aTir at "^^tiaml ^§^\\hx (Bhtntm. 

In the sixth article of the Constitution of 
the Board of National Popular Education, 
there is required' from all the teachers ^^the 
daily use of the Bible in their several schools, 
as the basis of that sound Christian education, 
to the support and extension of which the 
Board is solemnlj^ pledged." From the Fifth 
Annual Eeport of this Board, we select the 
following paragraphs from a speech by Mr. 
Sawtell, at the Anniversarj^ in Cleveland, in 
1852. We make this quotation, because it 
presents, by so happy and j)owerful an illus- 
tration, the necessity of a free and open Bible 
in our common schools, as the only possible 
way in which our nation can continue self- 
governed. The Bible for the masses, Mr. 
Sawtell truly proclaims, is God's great instru- 



280 BOAED OF 

ment for governing men and nations. The 
Bible for the millions of the young. 

'^ There is hut one alternative. God will 
have men and nations governed ; and they 
must be governed by one of the two instru- 
ments — AX OPEN Bible, with its hallowed in- 
fluencesj or a standing army with bris- 
tling BAYONETS. One is the product of God's 
wisdom, the other, of man's folly ; and that 
nation or people that dare discard, or will not 
yield to the moral power of the one, must sub- 
mit to the brute force of the other. Herein 
do we discover the secret of our ability to 
govern ourselves. Just so long, and no 
longer, than we preserve the open Bible in our 
schools, shall we be capable of self-govern- 
ment. Let me illustrate my meaning by a 
single fact: During a seven years' residence 
in France, party pohtics often ran high in my 
native land*. The v^'hole country, on the eve 
of a presidential election, seemed like ^ Ocean 
into tempest wrought.' Political editors 
seemed to be at swords' points ; and, to the 
Frenchman, our ship of State appeared hter- 
ally to be beating upon the shoals and quick- 



NATIONAL POPULAR EDUCATIOX. 281 

sands of a lee shore ; and their cry was, ' She 
must go down — she can never out-ride the 
storm.' But the next arrival, perhaps, an- 
nounced the result of the contest, the triumph 
and the defeat. The stci^m had died away — 
scarcely a ripple to be seen upon the mighty 
ocean of agitated mind. The farmer had re- 
turned quietly to his plough — ^the mechanic to 
his shop — the merchant to his counting-house ; 
and those editors, who, to the Frenchman, 
seemed so belligerent, were playing off their 
jokes upon each other, as though nothing had 
happened. And now, the noble ship once 
more rights herself, obeys her helm, and, with 
all her canvas spread to the wind, her ban- 
ners unfurled, her stars and stripes waving at 
mast-head, she booms onvrard with accelerated 
speed and power, to the chagTin and amaze- 
ment of every despotic power in the Old 
World; while the Frenchman, with a shrug 
of the shoulder, would press my hand and ex- 
claim — ' You, Americans, are the queerest 
people in the world. Hovr is it, that you can 
create such a storm, and your political editors 
can talk so rabidly, and lash the whole nation, 
24* 



282 BOARD OF 

like an ocean, into mountain waves, and yet, 
the moment the election is over, all is qniet, 
all seem satisfied? Can yon explain it? 
Why, if such a storm had been raised here in 
France, blood wonld have flown to the horse's 
bridles. Do tell me the secret of that power 
that can control the multitude, under such ex- 
citement?' Well, how did I explain it? I'll 
tell you in few words : — 

'^ Opening the Bible, I said to the French- 
man — ^ From this despised and proscribed 
book, which God has given to illumine the 
path of everj^ man, emanate the light and the 
power that control the American mind in 
such emergencies. Tens of thousands of our 
citizens who deposit their votes in the ballot 
box, have been blessed with pious mothers, 
who brought their infant minds early in con- 
tact with God's precious truth. They taught 
them to commit to mem^orj^ such passages as 
these — " He that is slow to anger is better than 
the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit, than 
he that taketh a city." "The fear of the 
Lord is the beginning of Avisdom." " Eemem- 
ber now thy Creator in the days of thy youth,' 



NATIONAL POPULAR EDUCATION. 283 

" Do unto* others as ye would that they should 
do unto yoD," &c., &c. These and kindred 
texts were taught them in the nursery, the 
sabbath school, public schools, by mothers and 
teachers, as God commands, '' when they went 
out and when they came in, when they sat 
down and when they rose up," giving them 
^'line upon line, precept upon precept, here a 
little and there a little," thus engraving them 
deeply upon the tablets of their hearts, im- 
buing their infant spirits with the spirit of 
the gospel — which is " peace on earth and good 
will to man." Thus they grew up and matured 
into manhood, with this leaven working in 
them, both to Avill and to do that which is 
just and equal toward God and toward men ; 
and though multitudes there may be, who 
have not been blessed with this early religious 
training from an open Bible, yet a sufficient 
number have been thus trained to exert an 
all-pervading, controlling influence over the 
masses ; and hence our' indebtedness to an 
OPEN BIBLE, for OUT ability to govern our- 
selves. Take from us the open Bible, and 
like Sampson shorn of his locks, we should 



284 NATIONAL POPULAR EDUCATION. 

become as weak as any otlier people. Take 
away the Bible, and like Italy, Austria and 
Eussia, we would need a despot on a tbrone, 
and a standing army of half a million, to keep 
the populace in subjection.' " 

With the Bible, men can govern them- 
selves, and despots are superfluous ; without 
the Bible, they are a natural product and ne- 
cessity of society. Hence the malignant in- 
stinct of priestly and monarchical despotism 
against the Word of God ; what have we to 
do with thee ? art thou come hither to torment 
us before the time? Nothing would more 
surely lengthen out the lease and life of des- 
potism, than a scheme for the education of 
children, which should sedulously exclude all 
Biblical or Christian instruction. Mr. Web- 
ster cites a law case, decided in England, in 
1842, in the following summary : '' Courts of 
equity, in this country, will not sanction any 
system of education, in which religion is not 
included." The freedom and good govern- 
ment of a country are then and there only 
practically secured, where all the children are 
educated in the knowledge of the Scriptures. 



The common law and opinion in Massa- 
chusetts, as well as the statute, protect the 
right of the Bible and of religious instruction 
in common schools. It is to be hoped that 
the effort of the Romanists against the Bible 
cannot there be successful, though the dis- 
astrous experiment of its banishment may be 
tried in some cases for a season. But if once 
expelled, its restoration is well-nigh hopeless. 
Obsta principiis. It was Mr. Ohoate who ex- 
claimed, in one of his orations : " Banish the 
Bible from our public schools? Never! so 
long as a piece of Plymouth Eock remains 
big enough to make a gun-flint outof !" This 
is the feeling of true patriotism, for our liberty 
rests upon the instruction of our children in 



286 CUSTOM AND OPINION 

Divine trutli, and ''he is the freeman whom 
the truth makes free." 

''So pervading and enduring is the effect 
of education upon the youthful soul," says 
Horace Mann, speaking of a common school 
education, "that it may well be compared to 
a certain species of writing ink, whose color 
at first is scarcely perceptible, but which pen- 
etrates deeper and grows blacker by age, until, 
if you consume the scroll over a coal-fire, the 
characters will still be legible in the cinders. 
Hence I have always admired that law of the 
Icelanders, by which, when a minor child 
commits an offence, the courts first make judi- 
cial inquiry whether his parents have given 
him a good education; and if it be proved 
they have not, the child is acquitted and the 
parents are punished. In both the old colo- 
nies of Plymouth and of Massachusetts Bay, 
if a child over sixteen and under twenty-one 
years of age, committed a certain capital offence 
against father or mother, he was allowed to 
arrest judgment of death upon himself, by 
showing that his parents, in the language of 



IN MASSACHUSETTS. 287 

the law, ' had been veiy unchristianly negligent 
in his education.' ""^ 

And what if the State had been very un- 
christianly negligent in his education ? What 
if the State have withheld from him, or have 
suffered to be withheld, during the only course 
of education provided for him hy the State, all 
knowledge of the Word of God, and of the 
sanctions of religion enforced in that Word ? 

Speaking again of common schools, and of 
that religious training necessary for the reason 
and conscience under a sense of responsibility 
to God, Mr. Mann remarks : " But if this is 
ever done, it must be mainly done during the 
docile and teachable years of childhood. So- 
ciety is responsible, clergymen are responsible, 
all are responsible, who can elevate the masses 
of the people. The conductors of the public 
press, legislators and rulers, are responsible. 
In our country and in our times, no man is 
worthy the honored name of statesman, who 
does not include the highest practicable edu- 
cation of the people in all his plans of adminis- 

* Lectures by Horace Mann, Secretary of the Massa- 
chuBetts Board of Education. 



288 CUSTOM AND OPINION 

tration. If this dread responsibility for the 
fate of our children be disregarded, how can 
we expect to escape the condemnation, 'Inas- 
much as ye have not done it to one of the 
least of them, ye have not done it unto me.' " 
^' As educators, as friends and sustainers of 
the common school system, our great duty is 
to prepare these living and intelligent souls ; 
to awaken the faculty of thought in all the 
children of the Commony\^ealth ; to impart to 
them the greatest practicable amount of useful 
knowledge ; to cultivate in them a sacred re- 
gard to truth ; to keep them unspotted from 
the world, that is, uncontaminated from its 
vices; to train them up to the love of God 
and the love of man ; to make the perfect ex- 
ample of Jesus Christ lovely in their eyes ; and 
to give to all so much religious instruction as 
is compatible with the rights of others and the 
gains of our government ; and when the chil- 
dren arrive at years of maturity, to commend 
them to that inviolable prerogative of private 
judgment and of self-direction, which in a 
Protestant and Republican country, is the ac- 
knowledged birth-right of every human being." 



IN MASSACHUSETTS. 289 

K now we should take at random the va- 
rious expressions of opinion, from different 
towns and districts, we slionld find these sen- 
timents sustained. The conviction is all but 
universal that a just training of the child in 
a common school education is impossible in 
the exclusion of religious instruction. A Ee- 
port of the School Committee of the citj of 
Salem, Mass., declares that ^ithe sentiment of 
all parties is that moral instruction and moral 
consideration ought to have precedence of 
everything else." In the regulations of the 
public schools in the town of Swampscot, the 
following is the fourth section : '' The morn- 
ing exercises of the schools shall commence 
with the reading of the Bible ; and it is recom- 
mended that the reading be followed with 
some devotional service." And so in cases 
without number, the idea of banishing the Bi- 
ble and religious instruction as sectarian, would 
be deemed heathenish. 

The Annual Eeport of the Superintendent 
of the Public Schools in the city of Boston, 
remarks, that ''the moral feelings, in their 

early manifestations, appear first to the moth- 
25 



290 CUSTOM AND OPINION 

er's eye, Avliose light slioiild, -like tliat of llie 
sun falling upon opening flowers, give tliem 
the hues of imperishable beauty. But unfor- 
tunately for the rising generation, this high 
parental duty is now so often neglected at 
home, that man}^ a child must receive at school 
his first notions of his various duties as a so- 
cial and an immortal being. True education, 
in the broad anddiberal meaning of the term, 
includes .... such a moulding of the youth- 
ful affections and impu.lses, as will bring them 
into ready obedience to the voice of conscience, 
and above all, such religious culture as will 
aim at imbuing the mind Vv^ith that Christian 
spirit which teaches us to love God with all the 
heart, and our neighbor as ourselves." 

This would be impossible, were the Bible 
and religious instruction excluded from the 
schools. If the proposed divorce of a common 
school education from religious truth should 
be accomplished, where is the ^^ religious cul- 
ture" that constitutes a primary part of ^'true 
education" to be provided or introduced? 
The affections cannot be rightly moulded, the 



IK MASSACHUSETTS. 291 

conscience cannot be trained, without religious 
instruction. 

Mr. Mann applies tlie same principles to tte 
formation of District Common School libra- 
ries, and contends tliat one grand object of 
them should be, by the substitution of useful 
books instead of idle and immoral trash, to 
protect the children from those temptations 
and exposures which come from the flood of 
pernicious reading. ^^ Much can be done by 
the substitution of books and studies which 
expound human life and human duty as Grod 
has made them to be." " To rear the amaranth 
of virtue for a celestial soil ; to pencil, as with 
living flame, a rainbow of holy promise and 
peace upon the blackness and despair of a 
guilty life; to fit the spirits of weak and err- 
ing mortals to shine forever as stars amid the 
host of heaven ; for these diviner and more 
glorious works, God asks our aid; and He 
points to children who have been evoked into 
life as the objects of our labor and care." 

*^ For this purpose, I know 'of no plan as 
yet conceived by philanthropy, which prom- 
ises to be so comprehensive and efficacious as 



292 CUSTOM IN MASSACHUSETTS. 

the establisliinent of good libraries in all our 
school districts, open respectively to all tlie 
cliildren in the State, and within half an hour's 
walk of any spot iipon its surface." 

But how is it possible to accomplish this ob- 
ject, if all peculiarly religious truth is first to 
be expunged from the volumes ? How, if at 
the door of the school district library, a win- 
nowing Index Expurgatorius is to be set up, 
that shall drive away every religious volume, 
and blot out from other volumes any pages 
that may possibly be tiuged with a religious 
bias? 






At the session of the National Convention 
of the friends of public education, held in 
Philadelphia in 1850, a Eeport was presented 
on the subject of moral and religious instruc- 
tion in common schools, by the Committee 
appointed for this purpose. 

They remark that ^4n the common schools, 
which arC; or ought to be, open for the instruc- 
tion of the children of all denominations, 
there are many whose religious education is 
neglected by their parents, and who will grow 
up in vice and irreligion, unless they receive 
it from the common school teacher. It seems 
to us to be the duty of the State' to provide 
for the education of all the children, morally 

as well as intellectually, and to require all 
25* 



294 oPEsrioN and peactioe 

teachers of youtli to train tlie children up in 
the knowledge and practice of the principles 
of yirtue and piety." 

After insisting on the importance, first of all, 
of teaching by example, they say : " In the next 
place the Bible should be introduced and read 
in all the schools in our land. It should be 
read as a devotional exercise, and be regarded 
by teachers and scholars as the text-book of 
morals and religion. The children should 
early be impressed with the conviction that it 
was written by inspiration of God, and that 
their lives should be regulated by its precepts. 
They should be taught to regard it as the man- 
ual of piety, justice, veracity, chastity, tem- 
perance, benevolence, and of all excellent 
virtues. They shovild look upon this book in 
connection with the teachings of the Holy 
Spirit, as the highest tribunal to which we 
can appeal for the decision of moral questions, 
and should grow up with the feeling, that the 
plain declarations of the Bible are the end of 
all debate. * The teacher should refer to this 
book with reverence. If he have reasons that 
are clear and satisfactory to his own mind, why 



IN PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. 295 

he considers the Bible the oracle of divine 
truth, he may from time to time communicate 
those reasons to his pupils, if he judges them 
to be such as they can comprehend. 

^^ We would not recommend the reading of 
the Scriptures in course, but that the teacher 
select from day to day the chapter to be read. 
He may select a portion that commends hon- 
esty or veracity, kindness or obedience, the 
duty of prayer or the keeping of the Sabbath, 
or the necessity of confessing our faults, or of 
repenting of our sins. He may tell them why 
he selects the chapter he does, and may add a 
few remarks of his own, or mention some inci- 
dent that will illustrate and enforce the general 
sentiment. It may be well, when a pupil has 
violated any moral principle, to read to the 
school a few verses from the Bible, that they 
may see how such conduct is regarded by this 
book." 

They add to this the remark : ^' That it is per- 
fectly easy to communicate moral and rehg- 
ious instruction in the Common Schools with- 
out any degree of sectarianism, which is 
always to be carefully avoided." And they 



296 OPINION AND PRACTICE 

close their precious and admirable report with 
tlie following important arguments and sug- 
gestions : — 

" We believe fully in tlie necessity of moral 
and religious instruction, and if the school 
teacher shou.ld neglect it entirely, that very 
neglect might be an influence on the minds of 
many children against religion. If the teacher 
is loved and respected by the children, and 
gives them no moral instruction, they may 
conclude that it is because he thinks it un- 
necessary, and hence they may conclude that 
it is unnecessary. We recommend the Bible 
as a sacred volume, to be read as a devotional 
exercise, or as the text-book of morals and 
piety. On this basis let him teach all he can, 
without interfering with the rights of the dif- 
ferent denominations of which the school is 
composed; which we believe opens a larger 
field in this department of education than most 
teachers cultivate.'' 

The Board of Directors of the Public Schools 
of the Fourth Section in Philadelphia recently 
adopted certain resolutions, in reference to the 
attempt on the part of the Eoman Cathohcs 



IN PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JEESEY. 297 

against the Public School System, among 
whicli were tlie following : 

'•^ Resolved^ That we will ever insist on the 
reading of the Bible, without note or comment, 
in our public schools ; because, 1st, we believe 
it to be the Word of God ; and, 2d, because we 
know that such is the will of the vast majority 
of the commonwealth. 

^^ Resolved^ That we look on the effort of sec- 
tionists to divide the school fund as an insidious 
attempt to lay the axe at the root of our noble 
public school system, the benefits of which 
are every day manifested in the training of the 
youth. 

^^ Resolved^ That we will use every means 
proper for Christians and citizens to employ to 
maintain our present school system, and to in- 
sure the continuance of the reading of God's 
holy word in all our schools, without respect 
to consequences, political or otherwise, and we 
respectfully call on the members of the legis- 
lature to respect the rights of the great ma- 
jority." 

Of the opinion on this subject in New 
Jersey, we may judge something from the fol- 



298 OPINIO^^ AND PEACTICE 

lowing extract from a report by Mr. Halsey, 
of tlie Board of Examiners for the County of 
Middlesex, presented in tlie Eeport of the State 
Superintendent for the year 1850. Speaking 
of the importance of some work in which ^^ the 
best modes of imparting moral and religious 
instruction in the district school, and the im- 
portance of such instruction may be thoroughly 
discussed, and urged upon the mind and heart 
of the State," he remarks : 

" What God has united man may not sepa- 
rate without peril. The children of our schools 
carry hearts in their bosoms, as well as brains 
in their heads ; now, to separate the head from 
the heart, to cultivate the one, and neglect the 
other, is a divorce as unnatural and unchristian 
as perilous. The child whose hand is educated 
in elegant and exact penmanship may yet try 
his acquired art and skill at counterfeiting and 
forgery, unless his conscience is duly educated. 
The child whose passions are left untrained 
aright, whose will is unsubdued, whose lusts 
are unchecked, when hereafter crossed or 
roused, may rise upon his parent, take the life 
of a magistrate, sow sedition on shipboard, fire 



IN PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. 299 

a court-house or a jail, a dwelling or a prison, 
or revolutionize liis country to effect his fell 
purpose and reek revenge; revenge for the 
robbery of an education without religion^ a heart 
virtually plundered^ because deprived of those sal- 
utary restraints his fallen nature imperatively 
needed and God has so bounteously provided. 
Nothing, save the fear of God, can be a safe- 
guard against the terrific powers of educated 
mind, quickened genius, sharpened wit, and 
enlightened talent, to which it is the aim of 
our school system to give birth and manhood. 
How shall this mighty responsibility be safely 
met, unless parents and teachers be made to 
feel it, and steadily and earnestly aim at edu- 
cating the heart and conscience of our children, 
at home and in the district school? How, 
unless the Bible be more honored, both as a 
classic and a class book, and its pages and its 
truths made familiar to our children ? How, 
unless a higher and holier standard be dili- 
gently sought for, in those who have these 
young hearts, six days out of seven, under 
their powerful example and tuition ?" 



€antlusiau. 

To Tis, as well as to our fathers, God has 
spoken : ^^ Therefore shall ye lay up these my 
words in your heart and in your soul, and 
bind them for a sign upon your hand, that 
they may be as frontlets between your eyes. 
And ye shall teach them to your children, 
speaking of them when thou sittest in thine 
house, and when thou vv:alkest by the way, 
when thou liest down, and when thou risest 
up. And thou shalt write them upon the 
door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates." 
Educated as the Puritans were in the Scrip- 
tures, and in the most jealous reverence and 
love for them, as the foundation both of their 
civil and ecclesiastical privileges and blessings, 
they have bequeathed the habit of a rehgious 
education, and of the same enshrinement of 



COI^CLUSION. 301 

tlie Bible in tlie heart, to all their descendants ; 
a habit, which no attempt was made to under- 
mine, in any part of the country, till the Eo- 
man Catholics began the outcry against the 
Bible and the element of religion in our public 
schools, as a sectarian thing. But the good 
ancestral primitive habit is too strong for this 
infusion of Papal jealousy against the Bible. 
The decision and firmness of character^ which 
marked our Puritan ancestry, are features of 
New England still ; and New England schools 
and institutions have got their roots so en- 
twined around the Scriptures, and imbedded 
in them, that under God's blessing all the 
miners and sappers of Eomanism can do no- 
thing to loosen them. 

The same love of the Bible, and sense of 
our dependence upon it, are increasing else- 
where ; and the very attack and insidious ef- 
fort of Eomanism against a common school 
education with the Bible, as sectarian, tends 
to awaken the sensitiveness and alarm of the 
Christian public on a point in regard to which 
the people had sunk into too sluggish a se- 
curity. If we would keep our civil freedom, 
26 



302 CONCLUSION. 

we must educate our children in the Scriptures. 
That freedom came to us from the Bible ; by 
the Bible only we can keep it. Like the 
pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, 
Divine Truth led our heroic ancestors through 
all the sufferings, discipline, and struggles, by 
which they established our liberties, and no- 
thing else can preserve those hberties, or the 
spirit of them in their descendants. We must 
have a religious education ; and if an evil in- 
fluence should prevail with the State so to 
change the system to Vv^hich we have been ac- 
customed as to banish the Bible and religion 
from it, then the church will be compelled to 
take it up, as she does the voluntary support 
of religious worship. In reliance on Christ 
alone, she has advanced religion more than all 
State endowments in the world have ever 
done. In reliance on Christ alone, if compelled 
into it, she is able to do the same with educa- 
tion. She rejoices in the appropriations of the 
government for a common school education ; 
but if the condition of such help is to be an 
oppressive exclusion of the Bible and relig- 
ious teachings, she abhors the treachery. It 



CONCLUSION. 303 

would be the death warrant of freedom and 
religion to put her hand to such a covenant. 
There must be an education in religion and 
morality, or our life as a free people is ended. 
It is claims from other worlds, according to 
that noble sonnet of Wordsworth, that have in- 
spirited our star of liberty to rise, and other 
worlds alone can keep it above the horizon. 
No earthly expediency, or pohtical manage- 
ment, truckling to the cry of Sectarianism, 
can save us. Our freedom is the product of 
celestial wisdom, and not a covenant with the 
powers of darkness, nor the child of a cun- 
ing policy ; and celestial wisdom alone can 
keep it. 

" What came from heaven to heaven by nature clings, 
And if dissevered thence, its course is short." 



THE END. 



